Blog: In celebration of redwoods

Redwood City’s namesake tree, the coast redwood, is the tallest tree in the world and can live for over 2,000 years. Although our local redwoods were nearly all clear-cut decades ago, conservation organizations and agencies are working to help redwood forests return to the beauty and biodiversity of former times.

Facts about coast redwoods

Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) live only along the Northern California coast and part of the southern Oregon coast. This region provides coast redwoods with the cool, moist air and fog they need to thrive. Coast redwoods are distinct from their cousins, the giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum), which grow only in the Sierra Nevada mountains. While giant sequoias are the largest tree in the world by volume, coast redwoods are the tallest.

One amazing fact about coast redwoods was unknown until the 1990s when ecologists first climbed into the upper forest canopy and found an entire aerial ecosystem thriving hundreds of feet above the ground. Duff (redwood needles) and other organic matter collects in forks and hollows of redwoods’ giant branches and allows ferns, berries and even seedlings of other trees to grow right on redwoods’ branches. Insects and other wildlife rely on this aerial forest. Some animal species, like the wandering salamander, live their entire lives in the redwood forest canopy, never touching the ground and probably never even leaving a single tree. The marbled murrelet, an endangered seabird, will only lay its single egg on a redwood bough high above the ground, sometimes flying inland several miles to do so. 

History of logging in local redwood forests

Beginning in the 1800s, the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains were heavily logged for many decades. Redwood City got its name because its port was where redwood logs were shipped north to supply building materials to San Francisco. Because redwood trees are naturally resistant to rot and insect damage due to the high tannin content of the wood, redwood lumber is in high demand. It remains so today, especially for outdoor uses such as decks. 

The unfortunate result is that very few old-growth redwood trees remain in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A few places, often privately owned, were never logged, and individual trees survive here and there (usually because the trees were considered flawed in some way that made them undesirable for lumber). Second-growth redwood forests are often very dense since when a redwood tree is cut down, the stump often sends up several new shoots all at once, resulting in a thick stand of trees all about the same age and size. This is why hiking in a local redwood forest can be like walking through a silent, shadowy cathedral, with a thick layer of duff on the forest floor muffling your footsteps and the solid canopy overhead blocking the sunlight and creating an eternal twilight underneath. Although this can be a wonderful and meditative experience, a truly healthy redwood forest would have more sunlight, greater biodiversity, and would be full of the sounds of birds and insects.

Today, conservation organizations and agencies are working to restore our redwood forests to the biodiversity of former times. This is a time-consuming and challenging task, especially since, due to climate change and decades of fire suppression, the risk of wildfire is higher than ever. We need to manage forests to reduce fire risk as well as to enhance forest health, all while trying to fix the mistakes of the past. The 2020 CZU fire, which burned some of the redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains so fiercely that even naturally fire-resistant redwoods were reduced to blackened trunks, was a warning that the rules have changed when it comes to forest management.

Where to visit redwood forests

There are dozens of local parks and preserves where you can go hiking among the redwoods. Some of my favorites are Purisima Creek Redwoods Preserve (be warned that the lower parking lot is still closed due to damage from the storms earlier this year), Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve, and Sanborn County Park. If you want to see a grove of substantial old-growth redwoods, Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County offers a glimpse of the past (bonus: the old-growth grove is wheelchair-accessible) – but be aware that you must reserve a parking spot before you visit. Reservations may not be available on popular days, so plan your visit well in advance.

Where are your favorite spots to visit redwood forests? Tell me in the comments!