Big trees

There are 5 species of tree that grow to more than 95m tall: the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), Douglas fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii), Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) all from North America; and mountain ash (Eucalyptus regans) from Australia. 

Determining tree height is difficult and often lacks verification. The tallest ever unverified trees were a Douglas fir from Washington State at 142m and a mountain ash at 133m from the state of Victoria- both felled in late 1800s. The tallest verified tree was a 865 year old Douglas fir at 119.2 m which fell over in 1930. The current tallest tree is the Hyperion, a coast redwood on the Tom MacDonald Creek in northern California (116.1m and 917 years old discovered 2007). All of the top 100 tallest trees are now coast redwoods. 

We tracked down the 4th and 11th tallest trees in world: the Statosphere Giant (113.4m- record holder from 2000 to 2006) and the Howard Libby (110.5m record holder from 1963 to 1988). The redwood forests were mapped with LiDAR in 2007 so they probably won't find a new record holder any time soon.

The largest-volume tree is General Sherman a (giant sequoia) in the Californian Seirras which is 1395 m3 volume, 83.6m tall, 3115 years old; and the oldest tree is a bristlecone pine called Methuselah (Pinus longaeva) in the Californian White Mountains which is 4856 years old but less than 10m tall. Unfortunately snow closed roads to both and we could not visit them.

We saw lots of other trees in our travels, some tall, large and old - see photos with species names.もっと詳しく