Sequoia National Park - Walking amidst the trees of Giants

The Sequoia Tree National Park is the final park of our itinerary. The park is called after the giant cypress trees that grow in this area. Nowhere else in the world can you find taller, wider and thus bigger trees. These massive wonders of nature are in average about 100 meters tall, 5 to 8 meters wide and can live up to 2000 years.

These trees only survive in this area because of the conditions that they are born in: not too dry, not too moist, not too hot, not too cold. Some actually need periodic fire for survival. Sequoias, for example, have adaptations to survive fire, and have trouble reproducing without it. Flames clear and fertilize the ground under the big trees, leaving the kind of soil in which their seeds germinate best. Not coincidentally, fire also opens sequoia cones, so that seeds rain down on this excellent seedbed. In addition, fires remove ground vegetation and forest litter that compete with the seedlings for moisture, nutrients, and sunlight.

As you walk through these woods and admire the hundreds of huge trees, you feel like a dwarf in a land of giants. It's incredible how something can grow from a tiny seed (about 5mm broad) to a 100 meter tall tree in "only" 600 years and then widen to about 9 meters during a lifespan of 2000 years.

It was a challenge to get these large trees into my picture frame. I also made two artsy pictures of the trees. One of them is a Sequoia, the other tree is a dogwood tree that only lives in the shade of these sequoia's.