Redwoods Like to Think Big
The redwood is the tallest tree on earth. Fact.
How do they grow to this enormous size? They think big! It sounds silly but everything about their structure is set up to be huge. I have a 1 year old tree (see below). The strange thing about it is that its tiny. You would expect a tree like a redwood to shoot up very quickly to gain great height. This is not the the case. This tree is slowly setting itself up to reach for the stars.
This small seedling that I have is only about 2 inches high. It’s taken a full year to get to this height. So why so long? Well it’s simply because it has a huge root. It has a single root which is 2 metres long. You heard correctly two metres long! I was quite shocked when I repotted it in the winter but it made perfect sense as to how the redwoods gain such heights.
If it was fully grown in the wild it would ‘hold hands’ with the other trees by wrapping the roots around other redwoods close by. This is how the redwoods grow up and stay up. I will write another post about fully grown redwoods soon.
A fascinating tree and the biggest mother nature gives us.
