wild trees
Subtitle: a story of passion and daring
By: Richard Preston.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 294
ISBN-13: 9781400064892
Subjects: Coast redwood -- California, Northern; Coast redwood -- Ecology -- California, Northern; Forest canopies -- California, Northern; Forest conservation -- California, Northern; Tree climbing -- California, Northern -- Anecdotes
Genres: Anecdotes.
Description: Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the tallest organisms the world has ever sustained--the coast redwood trees. 96% of the ancient redwood forests have been logged, but the fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air. Until recently, the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered. Writer Preston unfolds the story of the daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored. The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems, sometimes hollowed out by fire. Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life unknown to science.--From publisher description.