one badass tree

i dont know why i remember it, but when we were kids, holly used to make fun of a scene from robin hood: prince of thieves, where the peasants are being attacked by the evil british in their forest camp. "to the trees!" was the stupid line barked from some "panicked" extra. made me laugh every time. unfortunately, when i'm in a forest setting, i now occasionally cant help but suddenly think of kevin costner and why he didnt even bother to attempt an english accent in that movie. he really sucks.

i managed a costner-free experience the other day, thank god, as i biked through a steep hill in the presidio. it was one of those hills so steep that when relaying the experience to friends, you hold your bent arm out in an awkward 110 degree angle and wince while driving the point home. i was more than willing to stop my string of profanities about half way up the incline when i noticed a well-executed placard in the brush beyond the curb.

they're "renewing" the area, it read, by tearing out whatever trees the army engineers thought were nice back in the day and replanting the original species - young redwood trees. now, a few weeks earlier i would've thought, "hey, that's nice. redwoods are nice and big." one article and national geographic special later, however, i have a newfound appreciation for this sort of thing.


fact check! they're the fastest-growing organisms on earth - up to 6ft in their first year. if left to grow, they can reach close to 400ft high, the tallest trees in the world, and have a mysterious cell structure that allows them to essentially defy gravity, pulling water from their roots up the huge trunks. they also draw in water from fog hundreds up feet up. they were the dominant tree in north america relatively recently, but the last ice age confined their habitat to a thin strip of coast from big basin to a few miles past the oregon border. they do not grow naturally any where else in the world. in the early 20th century, when people just didnt give a damn, over 95% of the old growth trees - thousands of years old - were logged out. a few of the really old guys are left and protected, alive since the roman empire and before europeans ever arrived. they're so massive that rotting leaves can form soil on their limbs that support whole microcosms where other trees grow and animals spend their whole lives.

it's been a protracted legal fight to save the oldest surviving trees, and understanding exactly how rare they are makes it all the cooler that they survived on just this tiny strip of the world.