A guy up the street just cut down this Giant Sequoia in his driveway. It's nearly 6 feet in diameter, and only 38 years old. Many of the growth rings are over an inch wide.

Old growth sequoias, western red cedar, and sitka spruce have very small and fine grained growth rings. However, when any of these species are grow out in the open, they tend to grow very fast, and can appear much older than they really are.

One of my brothers and his family, live in Washington. The growth rate for pines in his area is many times faster than my part of Ohio and even faster compared to pines in Southwest Ohio.

Wood that grows fast, like that sequoia, is not near as strong or stable as wood from trees that grow slower.

Keith

^^^^^^
Yep, and even slow growing sequoias have poor quality lumber, from a strength perspective.

That is very impressive!

Maybe a dawn redwood? They get big fast.

Interesting show and tell. Thank you Waggler.

Rain forest

Thats interesting the fast growth.
I remember we used to use western red cedar for RR crossing timbers.They had big growth rings.
Some of the spruce up north in the lowland string bogs are a couple inches diameter and over a hundred years old.Need a microscope to count the rings.

He wasn't asking what kind it was. I feel like he knew it was a sequoia.

Stabilized, finely sanded and clear coated with a quality polymer, that round would make a beautiful table top.

Keith

One of the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels, that are never mentioned for some reason, is increased rate of growth in plants. Benefits agriculture, timber production, etc. but never mind mentioning anything beneficial when concocting a crisis.

That’s a big tree was there a particular he cut it down.

Our willows will sometimes approach 1" growth rings, they don't get tall though, just scraggly and fat.

Never seen anything like that.
Any plans for the wood?

we had a tornado go thru here about 5-6 years ago. Cleared up my woods pretty good in spots.
I cut a Sugar Maple that was only about 6" in dia.
The growth rings were very small about 1/32 to 1/16" till the last 5 years then they jumped up to about 3/8"/yr. And this in 3 very dry years.
Having lots of sunlight makes a big difference.

A 6" hardwood tree can be either 90 years old or just 20, all depends upon conditions.

very Cool Mark!

I believe that is the Sequoiadendron giganteum. The sierra redwood. We have a grove of about 300 on our farm. They were planted in 1972-3. I'll post a pic sometime.

Still, giant sequoias have nothing on the Pachaco trees I grew in the Ecuador's Amazon region. (Schizolobium sp) Their average growth rate was 6 meters per year with a large limbless straight bole. Rotation age was 10 years from plant to harvest.

Those species have a very large flair at the base of the trunk, and that extra width may just be a distortion because of it.

Wow. That's incredible!

What's the seed/fruit on a Sequoia look like? I'm guessing they have cones like a pine...?