On a steep hillside along the spectacularly rugged Mendocino County coast, is an 11-acre grove of ancient redwood trees with twisted trunks and branches that shoot out wildly in all directions as if frozen in the middle of a conniption fit.
The contorted trees, most of which are 500 years old, survived only because their bent wood could not be turned into lumber, and they are a biological gold mine to conservationists.
The grove of "candelabra" redwoods, known as the Enchanted Forest, is one of the primary reasons San Francisco's Save the Redwoods League purchased the spectacular 957-acre piece of coastline known as Shady Dell, where the gnarled old trees live.
"This is an example of redwoods responding to the environment - the coastal wind," Emily Limm, the league's director of science, said as she stood under a huge branch jutting sideways out from the trunk. "The tops of these trees get broken off by the wind, so they regrow near the trunk."
No comments:
Post a Comment