The tallest living tree today is the Mendocino Tree, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) found at Montgomery State Reserve. The Mendocino Tree stands at 112 meters (367 feet, 6 in), or five stories higher than the Statue of Liberty. It is estimated to be over 1000 years old. It was declared the tallest tree in 1996. 

Located less than one hour from Stevenswood Lodge, 15 miles east of the town of Comptche is the beautiful Montgomery Woods State Reserve, in the heart of the Coast Range, has redwoods, where visitors can walk along one of the park’s many trails. It is an excellant example of both a magnificent coastal redwood grove and a beautiful fern forest.

Montgomery Woods State Reserve is an 1,142 acre remnant of old-growth redwoods. Montgomery Woods is one of the more remote of California’s 31 redwood parks. It is a perfect place for a picnic, and tables are provided for that purpose. The redwoods you will see here, while walking the trail, are among some of the most spectacular redwoods in the Western United States. A trail follows Montgomery Creek upstream to five separate redwood groves that have never been logged. The trail is about three miles long, laid out in a shollow loop that takes about an hour to travel.

Standing under this redwood, like others, would probably cause one to get extremely wet. So much “fog drip” condenses on a redwood’s needles, branches and trunk that it waters the tree as well the surrounding vegetation, playing a large role in creating and maintaining the ecosystem. Redwoods can gather as much as half of a forest’s annual supply of water. Just one tree can effectively drop 4 inches of rainfall in one night. Plants normally move water up from the ground to their foliage where it evaporates. That action then pulls more water up the plant. But the taller the plant, the more likely the system is to break down. However, the fog that surrounds the redwoods may slow the evaporation rate so much that the plants don’t need to send much water skyward or can even get water directly from the mist. This helps explain why the redwoods are the tallest trees on the earth. The taller Coast Redwood grows along the California coast into Southern Oregon in an area about 500 miles long by 20 or 30 miles wide.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 6:20 am and is filed under Mendocino News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.