1.5 million Giant Sequoia seedlings

1.5 million Giant Sequoia seedlings under glass. Etna, Siskiyou County, CA. Cal Forest Nursery. The species Sequoiadendron giganteum is being planted in artificial groves beyond the boundaries of the 75 native groves along the western Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. www.spi-ind.com/ It is clear from the beginning that SPI wasn't doing anything for free, or for ecological, or spiritual reasons.. Of course, they want to have a profit. It's not pure conservation. See it from the other point: UCLA and USGS and National Park Scientists always wanted to do such a thing, but nobody offered their land. Now they finally could convince someone to support the idea, albeit under their profit conditions. It's a great success to have won a big lumber industries (and the same time, shows how generous they can afford to be, in other words, how well their business is doing!). It is however a BIG SHAME that nobody else felt responsible, and offered their land, like the FS or other Nationals. As i say, it is a success to get a lumber industry on board, just to do the maximal possible, for them. The thing you seem to expect, creation of some small true and untouched groves with a 'National Park' status, is beyond what a corporate can do. It would be equal to donate land to the public and even pay for the seedlings and plantations. Realistically, which industries would EVER do this. So being fair, it's a success they at least establish a generation of huge, old trees. And yes, in 100 years they might change their goals and cut them down. It's like a poker game: It might as well happen that in 100 years, those groves are so valuable, that they will be taken into public ownership or at least gain some special protection status. (Maybe SPI would charge for entrance, yes, why not, the NPS does too.) For the thing you seem to expect, the full deal, the FS or NPS would be in charge. But what can NPS do when they do now own land outside the parks, and do not have their own funds ? They got the money from the state, anyway. The FS could basically provide land, but still, they had to ask the USDA, which should be the ultimate governor. Now what can you expect from a agriculture department ? Nature conservation never was their main agenda. If they had to provide land, they'd need an order from way up, maybe to the owner: Which is the public, so it needs a decision and issue from the president.

Attachments:

1.5 million Giant Sequoia seedlings.kmz (1.93 KB)

Natural Regeneration of Millions of Giant Sequoia seedlings after fire. Link includes extremely rare photograph of Sequoiadendron giganteum seedlings in the wild. Besides the cluster in the photograph look around and in the foreground.


ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/05/14/months-after-rough-fire-millions-of-giant-sequoia-seedlings-take-root/
link

Nice to hear from you again!



I thought about you last Saturday when I made my first foray on my bicycle to a park about a mile from my home, after being released from the hospital after a six-day stay and some minor surgery. The reason you came to mind was that I saw, in riding around the park, three meta sequoia trees decked out in their fall splendor. (The trees are on the left, just after the 4:30 mark.)

A friend visited today, and she, her husband, and friends visited the site in Shiga Ken you POSTED in the old GEC. Interestingly enough, the famous trees at the Shiga site, while much higher than those at Kyūhōji Park, were still showing in her pictures much more green than the ones I videoed on the same day. I'm guessing that the Lake Biwa basin might enjoy some kind of pocket of warmth that puts the leaf color changing unexpectedly behind

I'll take your word for it since you say you saw Metasequoia at that place. But as far as the video goes those trees could be anything - liquidambar, maple, oak, ...

These are the trees I was referring to.

Thanks to you (and my recent efforts to get out and see the autumn colors before they are gone) I've noticed a great many more metasequoia trees all over the Osaka area. As the needles have reddened, I've noticed in subsequent visits at least a dozen trees in the park in that video, and there are many in the first couple of shots in this one.

its one of the few trees one can identify just by the bark and trunk. I often spot them from a distance or in a driveby. isnt it fun?! and learning about their history too.

another popular and sAcred tree in japan is Cryptomeria jAponica. THEY CALL IT RED CEDAR BUT ITS NOT A CEDAR ITS ANOTHER REDWOOD OF THE CYPRESS FAMILY AND PLANTED ALONG ROADS AND TEMPLE GROUNDS.

My impression is that in Japan all trees (not just cedar) are sacred, as are boulders, mountains, and just about anything in the natural world. Probably the most famous stand of Japanese cedar is at the monastic complex of Kōyasan, but like the ancient camphor trees one sometimes sees at shrines, I expect the sugi in the huge necropolis there were not planted artificially but were already growing there when Kōbō-Daishi arrived early in the 9th century. I've seen lots of human-planted cedar trees, but those that I have been aware of have been on reforested private land and planted for harvest.

Attachments:

Sugi no Ki at Kyasan.kmz (1011 B)

that music sure sounds like john coltrane! the way those riffs role off in three.