Early results indicate that provenances from the north end of the range survive best in South Carolina and suffer less frost damage in northern France. Preliminary recommendations for seed collections in Del Norte and Napa counties are made for further testing of cold tolerance, but it is not yet possible to recommend sources for warmer areas. Its decay resistance and beauty make redwood lumber worth more than pine or Douglas-fir.
Redwood is one of the world's botanical wonders.
Today, however, Sequoia sempervirens is confined to a narrow 720-km strip of the California and Oregon coast, extending 30 to 60 km inland. It is now known that redwood can be grown in many parts of western Europe and in the Crimea, Turkey, Japan, New Zealand, Chile, South Africa, Tasmania, and in the tropics at high enough elevation to provide temperate climate. As efforts to grow redwood in many parts of the world get underway, information on provenance differences becomes urgent. It was evident to us by 1983 that a rangewide collection was warranted, with testing at locations in the temperate zones wherever there was interest in growing this species. In 1984, we made a 180-clone collection of redwood funded by the American Philosophical Society.