Arborists Are Bringing the 'Dinosaur of Trees' Back To Life (qz.com)

Arborists are cloning saplings from the stumps of the world's largest, strongest, and longest-lived trees -- felled for timber more than a century ago -- to create redwood "super groves" that can help fight climate change. "Using saplings made from the basal sprouts of these super trees to plant new groves in temperate countries around the world means the growths have a better chance than most to become giants themselves," reports Quartz. "Their ancestors grew up to 400 ft (122 m) tall and to 35 ft in diameter, after all, larger than the largest living redwood today, a giant sequoia in California's Sequoia National Park." From the report: Already, super saplings from the project are thriving in groves in Canada, England, Wales, France, New Zealand, and Australia. None of these locales are places where coastal redwoods grow naturally, but they all have cool temperatures and sufficient fog for the redwoods, which drink moisture from the air in summer rather than relying on rain. [David Milarch, founder of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a U.S. nonprofit that propagates the world's largest trees] calls this "assisted migration." Last month, his organization planted another such grove in the Presidio in San Francisco, California. The park lies along the U.S. west's redwood corridor, which runs from Oregon to California, home to the stumps the saplings were cloned from. But 95% of giant growths there were cut long ago. Many of the redwoods along the corridor now are young trees. Milarch notes that as the local climate is getting hotter and less foggy, it's no longer as conducive to producing the mega growths of yore. Now, 75 saplings created from the basal sprouts of the most rugged and massive ancient tree stumps of the coastal region will grow in the Presidio. They may eventually become the hardiest and tallest trees around, if their ancestors are any indication.

Comments

Terrifying images of Dinosaurs of Trees

[rsilvergun]

on the rampage in New York. I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart (or stem).

Re:Terrifying images of Dinosaurs of Trees

[alvinrod]

Dinosaur of Trees?

Jurassic Bark!

Re:Terrifying images of Dinosaurs of Trees

[TeknoHog]

Sounds Ent-ertaining.

More forests are good.

[Kernel Kurtz]

The particular trees are less important.

Re:More forests are good.

[xlsior]

Less important, but not unimportant: Thanks to their huge size & height, a square mile of mature redwood forest would be capable of sequestering a LOT more carbon than a square mile of any other type of forest..

(although counting biomass-per-year, rapid growing, shorter lived tree like poplars wouldn't be bad in the short term either)

lots of bad lingo hiding interesting article.

[gurps_npc]

To de-mystify:

Scientists are planting samples of giant Californian Redwood Trees, around the world in appropriate climates.

Global warming means California is no longer the best environment for them, so they are hand picking locations where it is the best environment.

Re:lots of bad lingo hiding interesting article.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you actually RTFA?

What a sapling!

Re:lots of bad lingo hiding interesting article.

[Brett Buck]

They said "dinosaur" just to get everyone's attention, but this is more like a selective breeding of an existing species, and transplanting into alien habitats, which may or may not result in more big trees.

  With most large species, the same thing that makes them big also makes them specialists. And they tend to be most prone to dying off with slight changes, because the environment changes faster than they can evolve - a problem simple and small organisms don't have. There's no particularly good reason to think that just because these trees grew old and huge under ideal conditions that they are any better at tolerating less-good conditions (like getting transplanted 12,000 miles away in a different hemisphere).

      We'll see, I guess, in about 2000 years...

Re:lots of bad lingo hiding interesting article.

[phantomfive]

They said dinosaur, climate change, clone, "super grove", "super trees," and probably giant redwoods to get everyone's intention.

It's hard to know what these people are actually trying to accomplish. The trees didn't die out because of climate change, their population was reduced because of logging, and there are lots of them growing now (mostly not as big, though). All up and down the coast of California, and even in the Sierra's, there are plenty of places for these trees to grow, and where they are growing.

Re:lots of bad lingo hiding interesting article.

[Brett Buck]

It's almost as if the article, and summary, where posted just to get attention to their program, and that somehow, the otherwise unerring bullshit detection instincts of the typical Slahsdot editor got, on this one rare occasion, fooled.

Re:lots of bad lingo hiding interesting article.

[skam240]

I'm not saying you're wrong but redwoods do have an impressive trait or two beyond height. The same bark that requires exposure to moist air also makes them mostly fire retardant. At least in the context of the type of fire present in wild fires.

Invasive Species

[cyocum]

"None of these locales are places where coastal redwoods grow naturally...". Does that not make them imported invasive species and should be removed immediately from those areas?

Re:This is cool and all

[alvinrod]

It's not just absorbing carbon, but also sequestering it. These will live quite a long time and mostly just need to be left alone to do their thing.

If these guys want to try tackle the problem this way, may as well let them. If you've got other ideas or a different approach, then you should be free to do that. Sure this isn't going to magically solve everything overnight, but it's better than just sitting around expecting someone else to do something. It's also kind of cool in its own right, so who cares if you think they have silly motives.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because redwoods actually require forest fires to properly open their pine cones. Without that heating the majority of the seeds will never properly germinate or be released from the cones, causing them to be eaten, decomposed, or be outcompeted long before they can become a threat to local flora.

Having said that, my real question is: 'Why aren't they selling cuttings of these in their store for local restoration in central/eastern California. You know, the NATURAL RANGE for Redwoods/Giant Sequoias? Personally I've got a coast redwood growing at home, as do the few people up in the foothills with their own redwoods. While not IMPOSSIBLE to find, the supply of giant sequoia and sierra redwood varieties are not the easiest to find. Coast redwoods, while seeds from the largest specimens might be difficult, are readily available in most nurseries around the state, and are very common in certain cities across the state.

Re:No.

[Sique]

As TFA explained:

Milarch notes that as the local climate is getting hotter and less foggy, it's no longer as conducive to producing the mega growths of yore.

So their natural habitat is no longer the way it was. The saplings will not grow that easily where their ancestor stood of which they are clones.

Re:Barrier?

[PPH]

They'd work along the northern border better

Perhaps we could plant them along the California-Oregon border. And just pull our lines back to something a bit more defensible.

Um..something isn't right.

[mark_reh]

They take 3-4k years to grow, and from what I've seen of sequoia trees, they have few branches and few needles to photosynthesize CO2. Surely smaller. faster growing, more leaf/needle sprouting plants such as bamboo would be faster at sucking up CO2.

It's nice that someone is planning for after we're gone...

Re:Um..something isn't right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think you're off by a bit there. Redwoods grow a few feet per year, some varieties as much as six feet. It may take 100+ years to grow a 400 foot tall redwood. It's more likely these will grow for less than 100 years and top out at 90 feet, which is what typically happens when redwoods are cultivated.

To create a biological carbon sink, you need plants that will live for a long time and resist decay. Bamboo grows fast, but sequesters carbon for a decade or two. Trees like redwoods sequester carbon for many centuries. The result is that boreal forests (including redwoods) capture much more carbon than other ecosystems.

Re:Um..something isn't right.

[careysub]

They take 3-4k years to grow,

These are the coast redwoods. Their maximum lifespan is about 2000 years, and most don't make it past 800. They tend to topple in storms around that time, like the Dyerville Giant that toppled in 1991, which is when they discovered it had been the world's tallest tree. It was 1600 years old though.

Several people are feigning horror that cuttings propagated from the largest trees the world has ever known (as far we can tell) are being grown outside of their recent natural range as if propagating any plant in a (currently) foreign location inevitably makes it a threatening weed. As climates change plant ranges naturally change, and they start growing places they couldn't before, and stop growing where they were once found. Nothing inherently dangerous in helping plants move to new, more suitable locations.

Obligatory pun

[TimMD909]

Jurassic Bark.

Re:This is cool and all

[Sique]

Actually, it's not genetic engineering. It's just taking saplings from stubs. When you cut down the tree, the roots are still alive, and new saplings will grow from them, being clones from the tree that was cut down.

Nice

[nospam007]

Now we only have to wait for 4000 years to see if it worked.

Re:What would stop the greedy morons

[Rob Lister]

A redwood is a softwood, not a hardwood. But I get your overly cynical point.