This sitka spruce was in Redwood National Park
I took this photo while standing in a field of sitka spruce. The trees towered above me. I was overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the trees that I saw. Being from the Midwest, I was shocked by the immensity of the trees in the Redwood National Park, which is where I took this photo.
I had been hiking in the Fern Canyon in the Prairie Creek section of the Redwood National Park. If you have ever seen the movie Jurassic Park, then you can easily picture what Fern Canyon would look like. It's an incredibly humid canyon, and the walls of the canyon are covered in ferns.
The hike that people traverse the most takes you on the Gold Bluffs Trail to the Fern Canyon Trail. After hiking to the end of the canyon, you'll either come out on the James Irvine Trail or head back the way you came on the Fern Canyon Trail. I decided to go up out of the canyon to the James Irvine Trail. It is here that I was enveloped by the towering sitka spruce.
Sitka spruce are known for their towering height. They can grow to be 330 feet tall. The sitka spruce is the largest spruce tree in the world. The tallest tree in Canada, the Carmanah Giant, is a sitka spruce. It towers over the other trees at 315 feet! Northern California, where I was, is actually the southernmost range of the tree. The common name is derived from the community in Alaska where they are prevalent. The scientific name for sitka spruce is Picea sitchensis. The sitka spruce can grow almost five feet per year, which makes it a great tree for lumber.
Sitka spruce can grow five feet per year!
The moisture is indicative of the environment that the sitka spruce thrives in
What I love about this photo is the fact that you can feel how moist the environment was simply by looking at the photo. There was a fog that was blanketing the whole forest. The sky was cloudy that day. You can see that age had worn away the lower branches of this sitka spruce to nubs. There is moss growing all over the tree. This moisture is indicative of the temperate rain forests that this species thrives within.
The trees of Redwood State and National Parks are a stark contrast to the trees that I grew up with. This photo is a great reminder that although I have seen thousands--if not millions--of trees in my life, many of them have been deciduous trees of a very narrow variety of species. I hope this tree is something new for you, or a reminder of the beauty of trees.
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