Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1890-10-11
GIANTS OF THE FOREST.
Some Interesting Points About the Enor-
nous Trees of California.

Some Interesting Points About the Enor-
nous Trees of California.
There are ten groups of Sequoia gil
gantea in the Sierra Nevada mountains,
and the descriptions of most of them are
found in the writings of Muir, Whitney
and Clarence King. Beginning at the
north these groups are named as follows:
The Calaveras grove, the South Calaver-
as grove, the Tuolumne grove, the
MERGED grove, the Mariposa grove, the
Fresno grove, the Dinky grove, the
Kings River grove, the New Kings
River grove, and the large Kaweah
grove. The latter consists of a number
of small sequoia forests extending over
a belt of country Ave miles wide and
fifty miles long. 1t is IN this region
that the Kaweah colony of solists have
secured most of the timber lands and
ere now building large mills. 1t is not
probable that in ten years any of these
ten forests groups will remain except
the Calaveras groves and perhaps one
or two other small groups now used as
summer resorts, unless Immediately
steps are taken to prevent the further
filings of timber claims. The records at
the land-office show that in the past
twenty months 121, $50 acres of heavily
timbered land have been bought from
the Government, much of it obtained by
a systemat evasion of the laws. Much
of this land has been taken upalong the
western slope of the Sierra Nevada, and
includes most of the Sequoia gigantea
districts. The Calaveras grove covers
fifty acres and contains ninety-three
large trees. One tree in 1854 was
stripped of it's bark to a height of
thirty feet by man who thought he
could make fortune exhibiting it. The
speculation fortunately failed, or the
grove would have been ruined by SINH
lar enterprises. This tree is estimated
to contain 537, 200 feet of marketable
lumber, and stands 325 feet in height,
girthing eighty-four feet without the
bark. A fallen tree was about 400 feet
in height and the circumference of the
trunk near the base is 10 feet. The
South grove contains $50 sequoias of
good size-some very large. One of the
largest of the standing trees in these
Calaveras groves is the Grizzly Giant
thirty-three feet in diameter near the
ground. There is tree in the Kaweah
region that is thirty-six feet in dame
ter, and there may be even larger ones.
The giant sequoia yields seeds in
such abundance (Mr. Bradley counting
S24 seeds in a small Gomez, and the
vitality of fresh seed is so uniform that
millions of trees could be grown and
planted on the mountain slopes of Cali
fornia. In the Sacramento, San Joaquin,
Sonora, Santa Clara and other large
valleys the tree thrives without espe-
cial care. In most places it has grown
faster than the sempervirens. If the
State were to undertake to reforest the
waste lands the giant sequoia would
offer one of the best trees for that pur-
pose. The reason why it now grows
only in such isolated and small groups,
instead of in extensive forests, is be-
cause its small light seeds can not east
ly root themselves on the dry, leaf
covered soil of the region. The climate
has changed; the tree is slowly disap-
earing.-San Francisco Examiner.