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Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds
Science.Org ^ | 1 DEC 20235:55 PM ET | BY ERIK STOKSTAD

Posted on 12/04/2023 7:57:00 AM PST by Red Badger

click here to read article


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Hey! Greenies!

THIS BUD'S FOR YOU!..........................

1 posted on 12/04/2023 7:57:00 AM PST by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

Redwoods - water won’t rot it, fire won’t destroy it, bugs don’t like, and its light to carry. They get big and old. Closest thing in nature I have been in that is like a cathedral.


2 posted on 12/04/2023 8:00:46 AM PST by Jolla
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To: Jolla

One thing I do not get, how can buds that just sprouted be 1000 years old, the tree sure, but the buds?


3 posted on 12/04/2023 8:04:16 AM PST by Jolla
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To: Jolla

The buds aren’t 1,000yrs old; the tree might be. Many trees do this. I’m a Horticulturalist/Botanist and this is not unusual in Nature.


4 posted on 12/04/2023 8:08:36 AM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: Red Badger

Quick! Cut em all Down! Can’t risk forret fires! Depopulate the forests of their trees!


5 posted on 12/04/2023 8:11:56 AM PST by Bob434
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To: Carriage Hill

That’s what I thought, the title of the article is not correct.


6 posted on 12/04/2023 8:16:03 AM PST by Jolla
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To: Red Badger
Great article until the author veered off into climate crap in the third paragraph...
The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with catastrophic fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could withstand the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate regime.
The author asks "Another question is how the redwoods would cope if a second catastrophic fire strikes soon."

But earlier the article points out the inferno devastated the canopy of the trees, so there's nothing left to burn. How would a second catastrophic fire occur without fuel?

7 posted on 12/04/2023 8:21:09 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: Red Badger

Another question is how the redwoods would cope if Bill Gates decided to buy and bury them like he plans to do with 70,000 other trees?


8 posted on 12/04/2023 8:21:18 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: Jolla

Someone over at that pub can’t write coherently; you’re right,


9 posted on 12/04/2023 8:22:27 AM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: Jolla

I have a couple ‘old growth’ redwoods about 10 feet in diameter. They’re hollowed out by fire from wood rats building nests at the base. When a ground fire comes through the nest burns like a blow torch, burns through the bark and kills the whitewood in that area. Repeat and you’ll end up with a tree gutted 30 feet up with an annular growth ring a foot thick and 3/4 of the circumference. I use tag ends of redwood lumber as kindling in my stove. Burns great and green branches burn just fine.


10 posted on 12/04/2023 8:23:34 AM PST by sasquatch
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To: Jolla
This is the way this species of tree has evolved over the last million years.
Their thick bark protects them from the forest fires that are TYPICAL for this area over the last million years. Some softwood species require the heat of a forest fire for their cones to open. Then the cone drops a SEED(not a bud).

This is all by design. Just as some species like Douglas Fir are not SHADE tolerant. Which is why for the seedlings to grow you have to CLEAR CUT. Meaning the small young seedlings will NOT grow if they are in the shade of larger trees. Some species will ONLY repopulate AFTER a forest fire. Natures way.

11 posted on 12/04/2023 8:27:15 AM PST by woodbutcher1963
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To: sasquatch

Right, the limbs can and do burn and the trees bark can be burnt but the tree themselves do not as noted by this article.


12 posted on 12/04/2023 8:28:11 AM PST by Jolla
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

“How would a second catastrophic fire occur without fuel?”

It will not.
The trees have adapted to this. See my post.

At least that is what I recall from the text book of Dendrology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Technology. Where they literally wrote the book.


13 posted on 12/04/2023 8:31:04 AM PST by woodbutcher1963
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To: Red Badger

“It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.”

Hooray for carbon!


14 posted on 12/04/2023 8:33:28 AM PST by SharpRightTurn (“Giving money & power to government is like giving whiskey & car keys to teenage boys” P.J. O’Rourke)
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To: woodbutcher1963

You wrote “some species like Douglas Fir are not SHADE tolerant. Which is why for the seedlings to grow you have to CLEAR CUT. Meaning the small young seedlings will NOT grow if they are in the shade of larger “

Hence the well-known species succession after fires if you don’t clear cut.


15 posted on 12/04/2023 8:34:00 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Sorry, I am getting old. Should be:

the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry @ Syracuse University.

I can’t even remember where I went to college.


16 posted on 12/04/2023 8:34:02 AM PST by woodbutcher1963
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To: woodbutcher1963

With a memory like that, you must be as old as those redwood trees!


17 posted on 12/04/2023 8:35:15 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: Bob434

call The Lorax


18 posted on 12/04/2023 8:37:01 AM PST by woodbutcher1963
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To: woodbutcher1963

The next fire might be a hundred years later...


19 posted on 12/04/2023 8:37:32 AM PST by sasquatch
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

1985 Alumni


20 posted on 12/04/2023 8:37:43 AM PST by woodbutcher1963
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