Seedling update

"J2"

Our Redwood seedlings have survived the long dark New England winter and are starting to grow new shoots and widen their branches. Of the two J2 seems to have done a little better, on B2 there are some needles turning brown on an upper branch. The crown area of J2 has filled out better. Supposedly redwood seedlings can grow several feet per year, but we haven't seen growth like that yet. It could be the indoors, the pots, or even the lower levels of sunlight during our winters here. To make measuring easier I printed off some some color square rules, one inch squares and taped it to a wall as a background. As you can see the heights are about 15" for J2 and around 12" for B2, which has more of a curve. The length of the lower branches is really amazing now, the longest I've measured is around 9" and each of those has several 3-4" offshoots

"B2"

I was partly inspired to write this after watching a great National Geographic documentary Climbing Redwood Giants (2009) on Netflix. The quality was great in HD, seeing the fully grown giants was impressive. The two main focuses of the documentary were researcher Steve Sillett who using a crossbow(!), ropes and pulleys pulls himself up the giants in order to climb into the canopy and measure them. The other story a pair of researches, Micheal Fay and Lindsey Holm, transecting the known extent of the Coastal Redwood range. While a big focus was on trumpeting successes in stopping old-growth logging of Redwoods and conservation, the sheer size of the trees was the big show. I have had the opportunity to see redwoods in Muir Woods, but nothing like the 350 foot giants in the movie.

The trees ecosystem supposedly supports more biomass than any other ecosystem on Earth, including the tropical rain forests. It was interesting to see the mulberry bushes and other plants growing from the branches of some of the trees, hundreds of feet up. Another star was the Wandering Salamander that may spend its life in the tree canopy. They didn't really mention much about birds or insects nesting in the tree, which I would have assumed to be a big part of the ecosystem, although the tannins in the Redwood bark are supposed to deter insects.


Finally here are a few more pictures of the seedlings, and some of their new growths.

 

"B2" new growth shoot

Another shot of both trees.

Two's company