A few days after our walk in the Arcata Community Redwood Forest here, we went into the town a few miles south of us to visit with Roger's daughter and the grandkids. We were going to celebrate Roger's birthday a few days late and E's birthday a few days early. We all agreed the celebrations meant another walk in the redwoods. This time at the Eureka Redwood Park, a short walk from E's house. What a wonderful little journey that was.
Here are two of the grandkids sitting on a very large redwood stump. They did a lot of posing for me, as we explored the forest.
We were so excited about this particular redwood. It had a burl. We've seen a lot of tables made from burl, but not many burls still on the trees. What is a burl? Well, here's what the internet had to say.
"Burl is the knobby growth most commonly seen at base of some coast redwoods, though it can also be found high in the canopy as well. Burl is a woody material full of unsprouted bud tissue. It serves as a storage compartment for the genetic code of the parent tree. If the redwood falls or is damaged, the burl may sprout another redwood tree known as a clone. "
If you would like to read more about Redwood Burls here is a link.
Honestly, I had no idea how important burls were to the life of the redwoods. It makes all those pretty redwood burl tables seem so wrong. So seeing this one still on the lovely big redwood made us all very happy.
I tried to get the burl and the magnificent height of this tree in one photo. Not very successful, but conveys a bit of how tall these trees are.
And because we were celebrating birthdays and time with the grandkids, here's Roger with the youngest grand.
The Coast Redwood forests are sure beautiful here. It's inspiring to walk among these young giants. I did a little googling around and found an article in The NY Times from 1973 about the conservation efforts to save these trees. Back then, nearly 50 years ago, only 15% of the old-growth redwoods were still standing. It's hard to imagine what that number is now. There is an old-growth forest about 50 miles south of us. We've driven through it so many times over the years on our way south to visit with my mom. We're starting to think it's finally time to make that forest a day-time trip destination. We'll keep you posted here when it happens!