California's Coast Redwoods Coast Redwoods C oast redwood forests are probably the best known forest community in California. Coast redwood forests were once wide-spread but are now relicts, restricted to a narrow belt from southern Oregon to Monterey County. Rising from massive trunks, they are the tallest trees in the world, some more than 300 feet tall.
Coast redwoods have thick, reddish bark and two types of needle-like leaves.
Those leaves found on the outermost twigs are of unequal length, occurring in two rows, wheras those of the central portion of the branch are short and scale-like. Despite their size, redwoods have an unusually shallow root system that makes them vulnerable to toppling over if the soil becomes overly wet for long periods. An unusual adaptation is the ability of redwoods to produce new shoots from roots, especially after fire damage. Root sprouting is common, and, in some cases, a perfect ring of clone trees may coalesce to from a natural enclosure around the parent tree. In this way, a single tree can be perpetuated more or less indefinitely.