As you may have read in their recent blog, Doug and Joanne Schwartz – League members and dedicated volunteers – are serving this summer as our Redwood Explorers-in-Residence, exploring the northern parks, and ground-truthing and mapping the groves of ancient …
We have probably all seen squirrels running around with a seed in tow, looking for the perfect place to bury their food for the winter. Some of these seeds do get eaten later, and some are forgotten and eventually grow …
Today is World Dictionary Day, and in honor of that I’d like to discuss a few words that are used a lot in our conservation science work. They are: Precision, Accuracy, and Bias. These may seem familiar, but they have …
It was a beautiful day for a hike along Peters Creek. The ancient forest of the Santa Cruz Mountains was in full bloom; chattering woodpeckers, the tumbling creek, giant redwood and Douglas fir trees all begged for acknowledgement and appreciation. …
Nature’s patterns are everywhere. Sometimes they’re obvious – we mammals, for instance, almost always have five fingers and five toes on each hand and foot. Sometimes these patterns aren’t nearly so apparent, but they’re still there nonetheless. The Fibonacci sequence …
We’ve all seen them—those enormous growths from the trunks or bases of redwood trees, sometimes covered in new sprouts, sometimes appearing to drip down the side of the tree like the molten remnants of a lost limb. These strange formations …
Every time I talk to a researcher who works in the redwood region, I learn something that makes my jaw drop. It happened again just a few days ago when I was speaking with Prof. David Wake of U.C. Berkeley. …
Redwoods do fine in Southern California, right? Researchers at UC Irvine are not totally convinced. In the 1980’s a scientist by the name of Ernest Ball cloned coast redwood giants from Northern California and reared test-tube redwoods. Many of these …
I just returned from a New Year’s trip through Yellowstone National Park, where I hiked out to see one of the petrified redwoods still standing on the forest slopes of Wyoming. This ancient redwood has been through an amazing transformation—its …
It takes a long time to get to Hendy Woods State Park from San Francisco. It takes a while to get there from pretty much anywhere, but it’s worth it. Approaching the park through the Anderson Valley wine country, the …
Why are Christmas trees shaped the way they are, pointy on top and wide at the bottom? It’s because their growth is regulated by hormones. One such hormone (called auxin) is produced at the growing tip of the treetop and …
“Transient Camp Causes Fire in Old-Growth Redwood Tree,” reads the headline posted by the City of Arcata. The fire did not damage just any old redwood. It burned (and is apparently still burning) in ‘Treebeard,’ a redwood estimated to be …
It’s fairly difficult for me to imagine living for 3,000 years. Yet giant sequoias live for millennia, standing tall in a single location as the years, decades, and centuries tick by. They are pounded by rain, snow, sweltering heat, lightening, …
This was a big month in California. While the election may be the first thing that comes to mind, we also witnessed the first auction of carbon credits to companies that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every …
No doubt, we have all experienced the joy of showing up to a thoughtfully prepared Thanksgiving feast with family and friends. Surrounded by overflowing dishes of food, it is nearly impossible to go to bed hungry following a Thanksgiving meal. …
Since I was a little girl, I’ve enjoyed standing next to the large cross-section of redwood trunk on display at the entrance of Muir Woods National Monument. It boggles my mind that this redwood started growing in the year 909 …
Did you know that the coast redwood forest is home to the largest slug in North America and the second largest slug worldwide*? Yep, our very own banana slug (Ariolimax columbianus) grows up to 8 inches in length and can …
I just returned from a vacation in Nepal, a beautiful country boasting the tallest mountains in the world. For two weeks I trekked through the mountains, seeing stark snowscapes and yak-covered slopes in the northern high Himalayas and the lush …
When the South Fork Eel River in Mendocino County turns blue during the winter, it is impossible not to wonder why the river changes color so much over the course of the year. With first fall rains, autumn leaves falling …
Did you know that winter rains cause fungi to reproduce in the redwood forest? Mushrooms are the most visible parts of the fungal body and grow up out of the soil so that the wind will disperse their spores. When …
