Mammoth tree: description, photo, interesting facts. Sequoia and mammoth tree Why is sequoia called mammoth tree?

Probably very tall and with a very thick trunk, if that’s what it’s called, many of us will decide. Few Russian residents have seen it. After all, it grows far overseas, in Central America.

Indeed, the sequoia dendron, or mammoth tree, can be up to 100 meters high with a trunk diameter of up to 10 m. This is difficult to imagine. A tree that is taller than itself tall house! And how shocked the Europeans were when they saw such a forest! It was in 1762 in the south North America, on the Pacific coast.

The tree was named sequoia by the Austrian botanist Stefan Endlicher in honor of the outstanding leader of the American Iroquois tribe Sequoia. Now botanists call it sequoia dendron.

This tree lives for a very long time. They say the age is both 3 and 4 thousand years. IN at different ages Sequoia dendron looks different. young tree, about a hundred years old, looks like a dark green pyramid. The translucent reddish trunk is covered with branches from the very ground to the top. Over time, the trunk becomes exposed and thick, and then becomes gigantic.

It is known that thirty people can easily fit on one stump of the Mammoth tree. And in one of the parks in America, a tunnel has been punched through its trunk, through which cars can freely pass.

Now there are only 500 of these trees left. They are protected, they are even given their own names, for example “Father of the Forests”, “General Grant”. Its red wood does not rot, and this was one of the reasons for the destruction of these trees.

Sequoia evergreen is a relative of Sequoia dendron, but is slightly smaller in size. Its wood is highly prized. It is also red and does not rot. Mahogany furniture is redwood furniture.

Sequoia grows very quickly, and forests of these beautiful trees are grown in America.

Sequoia dendron giant and sequoia evergreen differ from each other in the shape of their leaves and the size of their cones. Sequoia has narrow leaves and from a distance it seems like there are needles on the branches. Its branch is fluffier than that of the Mammoth tree, whose leaves are more like scales.

Evergreen sequoias have taken root on the shores of the Black Sea, in the Crimea and in the Caucasus.

In the autumn of 1912, near the village of Rhynie in Scotland, the country doctor W. Mackey, who also studied geology for his own pleasure, made a cut in the rock and suddenly saw perfectly preserved plant remains. On a bare, thin stem sat somewhat elongated balls with thick walls. As it turned out later, it was the oldest plant on Earth. It lived around...

There are seeds that germinate easily and quickly, such as maple, cereal, sunflower, lettuce, and weeds. But in almost all flowering plants the seeds are not able to germinate immediately. In order for them to sprout, they need to be placed in special conditions. Legumes and plants from arid areas simply need to be wetted before sowing, as they have a hard skin, and put...

In winter, larch looks like a dried spruce: bare branches, without needles, grayish bark covered with cracks. In spring, the branches of the tree are covered with green needles. Having touched them, you are surprised - they are soft, tender, not prickly at all. They turn golden yellow in the fall and fall off in the winter. This is the advantage of larch over other conifers. After all, perennial needles become polluted, which makes it difficult for the plant to breathe and...

The bright yellow flowers of St. John's wort open in midsummer. It grows in damp places in meadows and swamps, and even just in shallow water near river banks, and in sand, and on rocky areas, and in bushes, and near roads. It can be found high in the mountains, on alpine meadows. Bright flowers, but devoid of nectar...

Mosses and bryophytes are a special division of the plant kingdom. This higher plants, however, they do not have roots, and we can only talk about leaves and stems conditionally. Most big class mosses are local-stem. They grow everywhere - from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The stems of these mosses are covered with leaf outgrowths of various shapes. The leaf is sometimes wrapped and accumulates in this microscopic cavity...

Prickly raspberry bushes are so common that we notice them only at the end of July, when the berries are ripe. But pay attention to those shoots on which the raspberries ripen. They consist of two parts: a long red stem coming out of the ground, and short green branches with berries that grew on it. This red twig grew in the past...

In Asia and the Mediterranean, the fig tree is the most common plant. It gives people the most valuable food product - figs. It is also called fig or wineberry. Figs contain a lot of sugar and also contain vitamins A, B1, B2, C. In the Bible, an ancient religious book, the fig tree is a symbol of fertility. From 20 to 100 kg of fruits are collected from one tree. Fig tree…

Look at the groundnut pod. It is very similar to a pea and bean pod. And groundnuts, or peanuts, belong to the same family - legumes. Both the bush and the peanut flowers remind us of a very familiar plant - the pea. But that's where the similarities end. A peanut flower on a long stalk emerges from the axil at the base of the leaf petiole, attached...

We know that there is such an aromatic variety of apples with a specific taste - anise, that there are anise liqueurs, liqueurs and anise caramel. But perhaps few people know what kind of plant this is – anise. Anise, or star anise, is it a shrub or not? tall tree with fragrant, fragrant leathery leaves. Both the leaves and bark of star anise secrete a secretion that...

Laurel evergreen - this is what botanists call this low evergreen tree or bush. It has beautiful, fragrant leaves covered with a dense shiny skin. IN Ancient Greece laurel was considered a sacred plant and was planted near temples dedicated to the god Apollo. Laurel was sung by poets. Heroes, victorious warriors, poets, and emperors were crowned with a wreath of its leaves. An ancient Greek myth tells that the most beautiful of...

SEQUOIADENDRON GIANT(Sequoiadendron giganteum) also called mammoth tree due to its gigantic size and the external resemblance of its huge hanging branches to the tusks of a mammoth, it is undoubtedly the most famous representative.

Giant sequoiadendron occurs in separate small groves (about 30 of them) only on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in California (at an altitude of 1500-2000 m). The giant sequoiadendron was described in 1853. After the discovery of the Mammoth tree by Europeans, its name changed several times.


The giant sequoiadendron captured the imagination of the inhabitants of the Old World, and it was given names greatest people. Thus, the famous English botanist D. Lindley, who first described this plant, calls it Wellingtonia in honor of the Englishman Duke of Wellington, hero of the Battle of Waterloo.

The Americans, in turn, proposed the name Washingtonia (or Washington sequoia), in honor of the first US President D. Washington. But since the names Washingtonia and Wellingtonia had already been previously assigned to other plants, in 1939 this genus received the name Sequoiadendron.

Giant sequoiadendron is an unusually majestic and monumental tree, reaching a height of 80-100 m, with a trunk up to 10 m in diameter, different amazing longevity. The question of the maximum age of sequoiadendron still remains unresolved: they call it 3 and 4 thousand years.
Because of their durable, rot-resistant wood, sequoiadendrons in their homeland have been rapaciously exterminated since the time of the first explorers and gold seekers. The remaining trees to date, and there are only about 500 of them, have been declared protected.

The largest sequoiadendrons have their own names: “Father of Forests”, “General Sherman”, “General Grant” and others. The first of them, now no longer existing, reached, as is clear from its descriptions, a height of 135 m with a trunk diameter at the base of 12 m.


It is estimated that the Sequoiadendron, known as General Sherman, contains about 1500 m3 of wood, with a height of 83 m and a trunk diameter at the base of the tree of 11 m.

To transport it would require a train of 20-25 wagons. An orchestra and three dozen dancers can easily fit on the cut of another tree. Tunnels made in the lower parts of trunks are also known (for example, such a tunnel has existed in Yosemite Park since 1881). Cars pass through it freely.


Sequoiadendron as ornamental plant bred in many countries around the world. It is especially good at the age of 80-100 years with a dark green, regularly pyramidal crown starting from the ground and a translucent reddish trunk. With age, the correctness of the crown is disrupted, the trunk becomes bare and thickens, and the tree takes on a monumental appearance.


Having been brought to Europe back in 1853, sequoiadendron has taken root well in the parks and gardens of its southwestern part. Its seeds came to our country in 1858. The first trees were planted in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, then in Black Sea coast Caucasus and Central Asia.


And although they grow slower under these conditions than in their homeland, they nevertheless reach quite impressive sizes. Thus, seventy-year-old specimens grow to a height of 30 m or more (with a diameter of over 1 m). Unlike sequoia (“redwood”), Sequoiadendron is also called “Sierra redwood.”
(c) http://www.floranimal.ru/pages/flora/s/5581.html

Because of their durable, rot-resistant wood, sequoiadendrons in their homeland have been rapaciously exterminated since the time of the first explorers and gold seekers.


The remaining trees to date, and there are only about 500 of them, have been declared protected. The largest sequoiadendrons have their own names: “Father of Forests”, “General Sherman”, “General Grant” and others.

The first of them, now defunct, reached, as is clear from its descriptions, a height of 135 m with a trunk diameter at the base of 12 m. It is estimated that the Sequoiadendron, known as "General Sherman", contains about 1500 m3 of wood, with height 83 m and trunk diameter at the base of the tree equal to 11 m. To transport it would require a train of 20-25 cars.

John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt in the National Park

Sequoia- second oldest national natural parks USA. It was established on September 25, 1890 to protect redwood trees in Giant Forest(Giant Forest), including the General Sherman Tree, currently the largest tree in the world. Redwoods are also native to Mineral King Valley and Mt. Whitney - the most high mountains USA outside of Alaska.

A small portion of what is now Kings Canyon National Park was called General Grant National Park in 1890. In 1940, the park's boundaries expanded significantly to include the South Fork of the Kings River and more than 456,000 acres of wilderness.


Overall size The national park, including Sequoia Park, now reaches just under 900 thousand acres.

People appeared in the forests of giant seiquoias soon after the end civil war. The General Grant tree was discovered in 1862 by Joseph Hardin Thomas, and its name was coined in 1867 by a certain Lucretia Baker.

Five years later, on March 1, 1872, Ulysses Simpson Grant, the eighteenth President of the United States, approved legislation establishing Yellowstone as the world's first national park. The grove of giant (mammoth) seiquois named after Grant, as well as Yosemite Park, were approved by the same law.

From the history of the park


Captain Charles Young, Military Chief, Sequoia National Park, 1903
by Wm. C. Tweed


The new military leader arrived in Sequoia National Park in the summer of 1903 and immediately encountered many difficulties. Born in Kentucky during the Civil War, Charles Young was black, which was not welcomed in those parts.


He was the first African American to graduate high school for whites in Ripley, Ohio, and took part in a serious competition, as a result of which he was able to enter the famous Military school at West Point in 1884.


He was courageous and strong man and became the third black person to be educated at this prestigious educational institution. The conditions of this training were so harsh that he later wrote about it being the greatest test of his life.


In May 1903, National Park Sequoia was already thirteen years old, but he was still underdeveloped and difficult to reach. Since 1891, the management and development of the park was placed under the responsibility of the US Army, but due to lack of funding by Congress, almost nothing was done and much was stolen. The main thing is that there were no roads, the construction of which began only in 1900. But the work was carried out so slowly that in three years of work only 5 miles were laid.


Young immediately began to build new roads and widen old ones that even small wagons could not travel on. Soon the road ran to Moro Rock.
In 1904, Young was sent as a military attaché to Haiti. He later served in the same capacity in Liberia.
Young took part in the Expedition to Mexico in 1916. He died in 1923 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full honors.


Although Colonel Charles Young served in the Park for only one working season, his efforts were not forgotten. He is remembered for his energy, tenacity and dignity. Expensive ones, built under his leadership, improved only a little, still serve today.

Walter Fry: Famous Man
Malinee Crapsey
(This article first appeared in The Sequoia Bark magazine in the summer of 1994)


"When I first met Judge Frye, under his own grand old trees, I knew I had met a rare man..."


In 1888, Walter Fry first encountered giant sequoias as a lumberjack and was shocked. Having spent more than five days with a team of lumberjacks cutting down and felling a single tree, he counted the growth layers on the trunk of the fallen giant.

He had to count several days and the answer was surprising: 3266 rings, that is, 3266 years of life.

Two years later local residents petitioned the US government to take the great seiquois under state protection. The third signature on the petition was that of Walter Frye.

President Grant

The Park Authority moved the Fry family over the course of several years from the San Joaquin Valley to Trois-Rivieres. Fry served as traffic controller, and in 1905 he became park ranger. By 1910, Fry had become chief of the Rangers, managing parks for military leadership.
In 1914, the Army finally relinquished control of the Park and Fpay was appointed its official civilian leader.

Mr. Fry's contribution to the development and improvement of the Park was so significant that in 1994 the Lodgepole Nature Center was named after him.

Giant Sequoia

In the world, sequoias grow naturally only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, most often at elevations between 5,000 and 7,000 feet.


There are no more than 75 groves in total.
General Sherman's tree is between 2300 and 2700 years old. Its largest branch is almost seven feet in diameter.

Sequoias grow from seeds so small and light that they resemble oat flakes.

Take a closer look - there are tiny little people on the branches of the giant.

Translated independently from the page http://www.sequoia.national-park.com/info.htm#tree

Ten biggest giants:

Tree.................................... .......Location..... .........Height(ft) Circum(ft)
1. General Sherman.............Giant Forest........274.9........102.6
2. Washington .....................Giant Forest........254.7.......101.1
3. General Grant ....................Grant Grove ........268.1.......107.6
4. President ...........................Giant Forest .......240.9......... 93.0
5. Lincoln .....................Giant Forest .......255.8..... ....98.3
6. Stagg ...................................Alder Creek ........243.0. .......109.0
7. Genesis.........................Mountain Home..257.1......85.3
8. Boole..................................Conver se Basin..268.8....... .113.0
9. Ishi...................................Gi ant Kennedy.....248.1 .......105.1
10. Franklin.........................Giant Forest........223.8........ 94.8

From pre-park history:

To this day, there is debate among historians as to who was the first European to see Yosemite Valley. In the fall of 1833, Joseph Reddeford Walker may have been the first to see the valley - in his subsequent entries, he said that he led a group of hunters who crossed the Sierra Nevada and came close to the edge of the valley, which went down "more than a mile." His party was also the first to enter the Tuolomni Sequoiadendron grove, thus becoming the first non-natives to see these giant trees.

The part of the Sierra Nevada where the park is located for a long time was considered the border of settlements of Europeans, traders, hunters and travelers. However, this status changed in 1848 with the discovery of gold deposits at the foot of the mountains in the west. From this point on, trading activity in this territory increased sharply, resulting in the California Gold Rush. The newcomers began to destroy Natural resources, at the expense of which the Indian tribes lived.


The first reliably known white man to see the valley should be considered William P. Abrams, who on October 18, 1849 with his detachment carefully described some landmarks of the valley, but it is not known for sure whether he or anyone from his detachment entered the this land. However, there is no doubt that in 1850 Joseph Screech actually descended into the Hetch Hetchy Valley and, moreover, settled here.

The first systematic survey of the park was carried out in 1855 by the team of Allexey W. Von Schmidt as part of the state land survey program “Public Land Survey System”.

Mariposa Wars

Before the first Europeans appeared in this territory, the Sierra Miwok and Paiute Indian tribes lived here. By the time the first settlers arrived here, a group of Indians called themselves the Ahwahnechee lived in the Yosemite Valley.


As a result of the sharp increase in the flow of immigrants during the gold rush, armed conflicts began to arise with local tribes. To put an end to the constant skirmishes, in 1851, government troops were sent to the valley - the Mariposa Battalion under the command of Major James Savage with the aim of pursuing about 200 Avanichi Indians led by Chief Tenaya. In particular, the doctor Lafayette Bunnell was attached to the detachment, who later colorfully described his impressions of what he saw in the book “The Discovery of the Yosemite”. Bunnell is also credited with naming the valley after speaking with Chief Tenaya.


Bunnell wrote in his book that Chief Tenaya was the founder of the Pai-Ute colony of the Ah-wah-ne tribe. The neighboring Sierra Miwok Indians (like most of the white inhabitants who settled there) described the Awanichee Indians as a warlike tribe with whom they had constant territorial disputes; the tribe's name "yohhe'meti" literally meant "they are killers." Correspondence and notes written by the battalion's soldiers helped popularize the valley and its surrounding area.

Tenaya and the remnants of Avanichi were captured and their settlement burned. The tribe was forcibly transferred to a reservation near Fresno, California. Some were subsequently allowed to return to the valley, but after eight miners were attacked in 1852, they fled to the neighboring Mono tribe, who broke their hospitality and killed them.
(c) Weinheim

For those who saw a sequoia for the first time, it will seem like something magical, coming from a children's fairy tale. Scientific name - giant sequoiadendron (Sequoiadendron giganteum) or sequoia, but it also has another name - mammoth tree. It is truly insane in size, yes, and in appearance the branches of the tree are very similar to the tusks of a mammoth. The average diameter of a giant can reach up to 10 meters, and the height of some specimens exceeds 110 meters.

It seems that redwoods have a fairly long history of existence on Earth, and similar forests of mammoth trees already existed during the time of dinosaurs. Then they grew all over the planet, and today they are natural habitat limited to a strip of the foggy coast of Northern California (hence the name - evergreen sequoia, or Californian - Sequoia sempervirens) and an area in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The average age of giant sequoias is difficult to say exactly; it is estimated to be 3-4 thousand years old, although some are 13 thousand years old!

After mammoth tree was discovered by Europeans, its name changed several times. Thus, the famous British botanist D. Lindley, who first spoke about this plant, called it Wellingtonia in honor of the Duke of Wellington, hero of the Battle of Waterloo. The Americans, in turn, proposed to name washingtonia(or Washington redwood), in honor of the first president D. Washington. But since the names Washingtonia and Wellingtonia had previously been assigned to other plants, in 1939 this species received the name Sequoiadendron.

Unusual facts:

A living redwood that has been felled will continue to try to grow using its shoots. If nothing prevents this, the shoots facing upward will turn into independent trees, and many groups of sequoia trees got their start in this way. A “cathedral” or family of trees is precisely the trees that grew from the undead remains of the trunk of a fallen sequoia, and since they grew along the perimeter of the former stump, they form a circle. If you analyze the genetic material from the cells of these trees, you will find that it is the same in all of them and in the stump from which they grew.

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Sequoia National Park is located in the southern Sierra Nevada, California. The area of ​​the park is 1635 sq km. Established in 1890 for the purpose of protecting forest areas formed by redwoods.

It is famous for the fact that on its territory there are the tallest, giant sequoia trees. They got their name in honor of the Cherokee Indian leader Sequoia. The park has mountainous terrain, rising from an altitude of about 400 m above sea level in the foothills, to the summit of Mount Whitney, the highest in the contiguous 48 states, at 4,421.1 m.

The park with redwood trees is a unique exclusive of nature, in short. The first impression is as if you and everyone around you were shrunk with the help of an invention crazy professor. After wandering through such a forest for several hours, you can very well imagine the ancient and mysterious eternal forest in which Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil lived.

The park is located quite high in the mountains, about 2000m above sea level:

The park's most popular tree is the General Sherman tree, which is located in the Giant Forest. Exactly this a big tree in the world, whose height is 81 meters, the diameter at the base is about 32 meters, and the age is about 3 thousand years. The Forest of Giants contains five of the ten most big trees in the world by volume of wood. The forest is connected by the Generals Road to Grant Grove in Kings Canyon National Park, where another attraction of the park is located - the General Grant tree.

Tunnel Log is a small road tunnel cut right in the middle of a giant sequoia tree that has fallen onto the road.

Sequoia National Park is also famous for its caves, the number of which reaches up to 250. The length of one of them is 32 kilometers in length. The Crystal Cave is the second largest and the only one that is open to tourists. Sequoia National Park is attractive with mountain landscapes, beautiful waterfalls and alpine meadows. The park is home to many species of animals, including moose, American black bear, white-tailed deer, coyote, and lynx.

Sequoias - these giant trees are represented by two species - the evergreen sequoia and the giant sequoia or mammoth tree. Their height reaches up to 100 meters and their diameter up to 10 meters. Redwoods are known for their age—the tree can live up to 4,000 years. The unique combination of age, size and weight of these trees makes them the largest living creatures on Earth today. And this is one of the few trees that has adapted to forest fires. The giant sequoia is second in life expectancy only to bristlecone pines, which are found in the arid Sierra Nevada mountains.

There are redwoods, and there are mammoth trees. Both are huge in size. They are easy to distinguish from each other. A mammoth tree looks like a huge sprouted log, standing upright:

Californian sequoia is slimmer and taller than its counterpart and its silhouette is more reminiscent of a spruce. In the photo there is a mammoth tree (on the left) and a redwood bush (in the depths on the right).

Comparative Facts About Mammoth Tree and California Redwood

Mammoth tree Californian sequoia

up to 94.5 meters Height up to 111.5 meters
up to 3200 years Tree age up to 2000 years
up to 1200 tons Weight up to 720 tons
up to 79 cm Bark thickness up to 30.5 cm
up to 2.4 meters Branch diameter up to 1.5 meters
up to 12 meters Base diameter up to 6.6 meters
only by seeds Reproduction by seeds or shoots
the size of cereals Seed size is about the size of a tomato seed
ovoid Crown ellipsoidal
small, overlapping single needles, falling off in branches
each other, awl-shaped

A living redwood that has been knocked down will continue to try to grow using its shoots. If nothing prevents this, the shoots facing upward will turn into independent trees, and many groups of sequoia trees got their start in this way. A “cathedral” or family of trees is precisely the trees that have grown from the undead remains of the trunk of a fallen sequoia, and since they have grown around the perimeter of the former stump, they form a circle. Another way to survive is through the redwoods. Their growth is hampered chemicals, which is produced living tree. If a tree begins to die, or simply ends up in unfavorable conditions, for example, as a result of drought or forest fire, then the production of such substances decreases, and the influx is covered with green shoots. Finally, sequoia has a traditional method of propagation by seeds. About 20% of today existing trees grew from seeds. The rest are the result of one method or another vegetative propagation. If you connect these facts, you realize that some of these trees may represent a continuous sequence of growth of the same organism over 20 or 30 thousand years (or even more), reproducing itself vegetatively over and over again. Genetically, it will be the same tree that grew from a seed many centuries ago! Would it be correct to estimate the age of one of these trees based on the true age of the genetic material remaining unchanged? I don't know, but these amazing trees seem truly eternal.

Thick fogs are an everyday occurrence on the coast where it lives. California sequoia, and we can say that it not only grows wildly in such conditions, but literally needs these mists. These hundred-meter giants receive moisture from there for their needles at the top, where the vascular system can no longer pump it. average temperature at 10-15°C, prevailing in this area, is also important for life cycle sequoia. These two conditions - temperature and humidity - are the limiters that determine the modern range of these amazing giants. But, if they are planted artificially, they can grow in the most different places, for example, in Fresno (California), Waycross (Georgia), Florida and even Phoenix (Arizona). Although without coastal fogs and coolness, which feed them and at the same time restrain the growth of competing species, such as pine, they will never reach their true size and stature.

Video of a tour of the park:

Sem. taxodiaceae
Sequoiadendron giganteum

Giant Sequoiadendron or mammoth tree- giant evergreen conifer tree gigantic in size, its huge hanging branches resembling the tusks of a mammoth. The tallest tree in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden.

Its homeland is the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and warm California. And there, in my homeland, it’s huge evergreen tree reaches 80–100 m heights, since sequoiadendron is a very durable breed (can live up to 5 thousand years). In the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, the size of these giants is much more modest than in their homeland, but, nevertheless, the tallest tree in the Garden, reaching 38 meters in height, is the giant sequoiadendron, planted in the Upper Park in 1885. The trunk diameter of this mighty tree is about 2 meters.

This monumental tree has a regular, wide-pyramidal crown. Branching in young trees is very dense; in old trees the trunk is cleared of branches to a height of up to 50 m. The bark is red-brown, in deep cracks, separated by plates. The needles are coarse, hard, dark green with a gray tint. The cones are small (5–8 cm), oblong-ovate. Ripen by the end of the 2nd year.

The breed is slow growing, especially in the first 10–15 years. Quite frost-resistant—tolerates short-term temperature drops down to 24–25°C. It loves loose, deep, fresh soils, but even here in Crimea it does well on calcareous soils.

The wood is soft and not as valuable as that of evergreen sequoia. However, it also does not burn in fire.

The dryness of the summer Crimean air “taught” the tree in especially hot years to partially shed its branches, trying to reduce the area of ​​​​moisture evaporation. Funnel-shaped depressions along the entire trunk are traces of such “undressing.”

Sequoiadendrons were discovered relatively recently, since the mountain slopes of the ridge were inaccessible and only in 1850 the English traveler Labb found the largest trees in the world. First these huge trees were called “California pines” or “mammoth trees”, and later they began to use the designation of the Indians: the word “sequoia” is simply the name of this tree in the Indian language, but the same name was borne by one of the Indian leaders of the Iroquois tribe, the inventor of Indian writing.

In Nikitsky botanical garden - s 1858.

The ancestors of mammoth trees lived on Earth 100 million years ago. Old specimens growing in protected groves of California are listed in the state register under the names: “Thick Tree”, “Three Sisters”, “Pioneer Cabin”, etc. In 1881, while laying a road in Yosemite Park, they were forced to make a tunnel in one of the sequoiadendron trees, through which buses could pass freely.

At the end of the last century, a lightning strike split the trunk of one tree at the base and it collapsed under its own weight. The weight of this trunk is more than 1000 tons. Stump diameter 23 m received the name "Father of the Forest". In 1910, a room was cut out inside the stump and a cozy restaurant was placed in it. A spiral staircase around the stump allows you to climb to the top, where in the summer a quartet plays country tunes, 16 couples dance freely and there is room for 20 spectators around the perimeter.

When I. Ilf and E. Petrov, invited to America, visited Sequoia Park (occupies the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada), they wrote: “... we drove through an ancient dark forest, a fantastic forest, where the word “man” ceases to sound proudly, and only one word sounds proudly - “tree...”, I wanted to imagine that these trees grew peacefully when not only Columbus, but also Caesar, and Alexander the Great, and even the Egyptian king Tutankhamun were not in the world...”

Currently, in its homeland, California, there are no sequoiadendron trees older than 2 thousand years. But according to scientists’ forecasts, they can live up to 6–7 thousand years.