Jedidiah Smith State Park

Jedediah Smith 

Redwoods State Park

Jedidiah Smith Redwood State Park is named after Jedediah Strong Smith who explored the northern California interior in the early 1800s.  He explored and trapped the area starting in 1826 and pioneered a trail from Great Salt Lake through the Mojave Desert and into the San Bernardino Mountains in California.  In the mid-1800's, the California gold rush helped bring a rush of exploration of the area promoting supply routes to remote mining camps.  The exploration also helped populate the counties of Humboldt and Del Norte in northern California.

Jedidiah Strong Smith

What can you expect to find in Jedidiah? Besides redwoods, the park contains a diversity of conifers, such as the both the Douglas and Grand fir, Sitka spruce and western hemlock.  The madrone, California bay, Tanoak, beeches, both Big Leaf and Vine Maple and Red Alder are also found here.

The beauty of a redwood forest is made up of diverse both flora and fauna.  Not only are the trees majestic and magnificent, but the overall understory of sorrel ground cover, sword ferns, moss, lichens, red and evergreen huckleberry, thimble berry, blackberry and salmon berry bushes adds color and invites black bears, deer, mountain lions, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, beavers, foxes, chipmunks and birds, such as the pileated woodpecker, marbled murrelets, bald eagles and spotted owls  and other animals to feast on these food sources.

Yet, the most color and beauty comes from the pink and purple flowers of the California rhododendron and other azaleas during the spring.  The soil is rich and the matted ground cover is thick and spongy with needles and is the home to salamanders, mollusks, worms and banana slugs, as well as snakes.  Both the Smith River and Mill Creek contain both the king salmon and steelhead trout. The overall redwood ecosystem is rich in diversity.
 

Where To Go To See The Some Of The Oldest Redwoods
To see some of the oldest redwoods you will need to hike to Stout Grove.  It has one of the most abundant stands of old growth redwoods.  It is also very scenic for photographers looking for a good picture of a stand of magnificent redwoods without a lot of understory thus allowing defined photos of the tree.  The stand isn't very large and doesn't contain the biggest trees.  But Stout Grove is a must for visitors to Jedidiah Smith Redwood State Park who are looking for a serene place to gaze upon the wonder of the redwoods.  Stout Park is located at the junction of the Smith River and Mill Creek. Camping and fishing .

Smith River

Stout Grove

Stout Grove

For more information:
http://www.roadsidevisions.com/2010/10/jedediah-smith-state-park-in-california.html
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=413
http://www.nps.gov/redw/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm
http://www.redwoodhikes.com/Jed%20Smith/Jed%20Smith.html

Bark of the Coast Redwood

The Bark of the Coast Redwood

The relatively thick bark of the Coast Redwood is considered a soft wood (compared to the hard wood of maple, oak and walnut trees) reddish-brown in color and resistant to rot.  The thick bark is one factor in containing any disease that should this species of Redwood as it is normally over 1 foot thick on mature tress.  In addition, insects are discouraged by the high tannin of the Redwood.

Even though the Redwood can usually withstand insects, disease and fire (due to the low amount of resin in the bark), the tree can often be felled  by highs winds and flooding. The combination of high winds and wet soil is what causes the most destructive damage in a windfall.  Treetop levels respond to harsher wind conditions by producing pale green, awl-shaped needles near the top of the tree; whereas, needles nearer the ground are darker green and more lush.  The tree lacks a taproot, but it has a shallow root system that seldom goes beyond 12 feet underground. These lateral roots are very large and have a wide range of about 60-80 feet that intertwine with other trees. Trees older than 20 years old have thicker bark with deep vertical grooves that help it withstand fire and various diseases including fungi.  Younger trees and seedlings are more at risk for disease and fire due to their lack of thick bark.

The Effects Of Fire In A Redwood Forest

Fire ecology in a redwood forest proves to be very beneficial.  It aids the nutrient recycling, clears the understory, controls forest insects and diseases and prepares the soil for seeds. Vulnerability is created in redwoods to disease and catastrophic large fires when natural fires are suppressed.

For more information:
http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2009/hemmeric_nata/Adaptations.htm
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall99Projects/redwood.htm
http://www.redwoodworld.co.uk/redwood_types.htm

Save The Redwood League

As I am unable to permanently add this wonderful organization to my blog, I have decided to just create a post for them.

Save the Redwoods League protects and restores redwood forests and connects people with their peace and beauty so these wonders of the natural world flourish.

Since 1918, Save the Redwoods League has saved ancient redwood forests and redwood ecosystems to ensure that current and future generations can feel the awe and peace that these precious natural wonders inspire. They also save redwoods because they are rare — their natural range is only in central and northern California and southern Oregon — and because they are Earth’s tallest and some of the oldest and most massive living things.

The coast redwood reaches higher than a 30-story building and can live more than 2,000 years. The coast redwood’s relative, the giant sequoia, can live more than 3,000 years and is Earth’s largest tree by volume, with trunks as wide as 30 feet (about as long as a large school bus). Also known as the Sierra redwood, the giant sequoia’s natural range is only in 75 groves on California’s Sierra Nevada.

After 150 years of logging and real-estate development, approximately 5% of the original 2 million acre coast redwood forest remains.

Even though they have survived for millennia, these giants still can be cut down for lumber or to make room for poorly planned residential and commercial real estate development.

Since Save The Redwood League's establishment more than 90 years ago, with their members' and partners' support, they have protected more than 189,000 acres and helped develop 63 redwood parks and reserves for everybody to enjoy.

They help to save the redwoods by:

Protecting redwoods by purchasing forests and the landscapes that support them at fair-market value from willing sellers. They donate or sell this land to California State Parks and other government agencies, which protect the forests as parks and reserves for everybody to enjoy. Save the Redwoods also protects redwoods by making land preservation agreements. These contracts between landowners and the League limit uses of property to protect qualities such as ancient trees, habitat for threatened species and recreation.

They restore logged forests to their majestic state by, among other efforts, removing roads, creating wildlife habitat and removing small trees that were planted too close together in post-logging reforestation efforts. This tree removal promotes faster growth of larger trees and other old-forest characteristics such as a dense canopy, clear-running, fish-filled streams, and abundant animal species that rely on old forests.

They inspire current and future generations to save redwoods by awarding education grants to organizations that help thousands of children and adults better understand and appreciate these trees.

Through their science and planning work, they learn what redwoods need to survive and then award research grants, and develop science-based plans to save redwoods throughout their natural range.

For more information on Save The Redwoods League, visit http://www.savetheredwoods.org/

Rare Dawn Redwood In Healdsburg, CA

The Coast Redwood and Giant Redwood has a relative named Dawn Redwood. The fast-growing Dawn Redwood is the shortest and a deciduous redwood.  Considered a ornamental tree, it is native to China.

There is a rare redwood in Healdsburg, CA.  It is the Dawn Redwood and it is the only redwood that looses its needles in the winter.

The rare Dawn Redwood in the background center

 The Dawn Redwood is almost a tree of legend, a mythical ancestor of the California redwoods long thought to be extinct.

The species thrived as one of the pioneer conifers from about 80 million years ago. Metasequoia glyptostroboides is the only deciduous conifer in the world that loses its needles every winter -- and only one of three trees known as redwoods. The others are the Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) of the Sierra Nevada, more familiar forest friends by far.
It was first discovered as a Mesozoic fossil in 1941, and was therefore presumed extinct – the Mesozoic ended 70 million years ago. But in 1943 a small grove was discovered in Moudao, Hubei, China, and other forest discoveries proved it still vital, though rare enough to be considered endangered. Still, from extinct to endangered sounds like a success story.

Dawn Redwood with needles in summer

Same Dawn Redwood in winter without needles

The tree was planted in the Healdsburg Square in 1953 after being gifted to the city as a potted plant. Dawn Redwoods became something of a fad after World War II, and ambitious horticulturalists planted groves of the ornamental tree worldwide.

There’s even the Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve in North Carolina, founded in 1995 as a place to see this tree in a natural state in numbers up to 5,000 trees. As Redwoods grow very slowly, except for the Dawn Redwood, the park is not scheduled to open until 2035.

Below is a video about the Dawn Redwood tree that was acquired by a nursery.

 For more information about the Dawn Redwood Preserve, visit http://www.dawnredwood.org/.