It was one week ago, today that my friend, ‘Johnny Conifer’ (Dr. John Albers), and I were hiking in the company of immense, Coast Redwoods, their crowns within the clouds, early, somewhat beneath the clouds a few hours later and finally, bathed in warm, July sunlight and the cloudless blue skies of Southwestern Oregon in mid-afternoon.
We really hadn’t really gone looking for trouble. We just stumbled upon it. You know, sprouting trouble. Worse yet, epicormic sprouting trouble!
OK, ok, yes. Actually we were looking for trouble, this very sort of trouble. I had visited this area earlier in the year, on April Fools Day (draw your own conclusions), and had really wanted John to walk it with me and get his read on what we were seeing. Together, we walked about six miles last Wednesday in a handful of very different locations, within maybe sixty miles, farthest point to farthest point of one another.
Our first sprouting encounter of the day:
Show me any passel (or forest) of Coast Redwoods growing in real-world conditions and I’ll show you a certain amount of storm damage; broken branches, windfall and innovation; wounded trees with the will to live and a whole bunch of latent buds just waiting to be called into action. Some of the groves we explored and trails we walked showed almost no storm damage. Others gave clear signs of days and nights spent reaping the whirlwinds of winter.
Here’s John, lost in wonderment as he looks up into the mists and canopy of the Ladybird Johnson Grove of redwoods. And just fifty feet farther down the trail, a young redwood seedling, knocked over by several fallen branches from one of the winter-storm-ravaged giants, nearby continues to fight for its life. So this young redwood, now pushed over on its side and held there by a heavy branch was not completely uprooted. It still lives. And bingo, so many sleeping buds, dormant beneath the bark have been awakened by crisis. This is a type of Epicormic Sprouting.
Sprouting encounter number two: at the far end of a side trail nearer the coast.
I count five, but there could be six new ‘trees’ growing upward for what must amount to at least a decade or two, now, emerging wondrously out of the broken off rim of a towering, heartwood-hollow, Coast Redwood. Yes, some of those dormant buds sleeping beneath the bark ‘sprouted’ in response to major structural damage, demonstrating once again the incredible, ‘comeback’ capabilities of Sequoia sempervirens when given half a chance.
Two more views, wide and wider yet, of the same broken off redwood that sprouted at least five more trees into existence after breaking off eighty or more feet above ground.
Three:
After seeing examples like this (above), in living, healthy forests, I drove John north, to Brookings, OR and then, east from there, back along the Chetco River to the first easily accessible groves of charred redwood trees that burned in the Chetco Bar Fire in July of 2017. We had talked about these survivors but I really wanted John to see and walk among them in person. We ate our lunch there. I picked and ate a handful of perfect, ripe, wild black raspberries there. Only two cars passed us the entire time we were exploring and pondering. A bit of a breeze. Quiet, otherwise. Kinda perfect.
Six years to the month after the Chetco Bar Fire swept through this forest campground killing much and scorching the rest, you can easily recognize the trees that were not too seriously burned and those others, the green, wooley looking ones, who lost all or nearly all of their branches to the fire, but managed to survive the damage, awakening thousands of ‘epicormic’ buds which then pushed out through blackened bark to create new photosynthetic factories of branchlets and leaves with which to feed themselves. And then of course, you can also see those trees, both in the campground area and beyond that did not survive the fire. They are many, and by far the majority.
A much closer look at those ‘sprouts’.
If you get up close you can study the way these epicormic branches and branchlets have pushed their way out through the charred tree bark and provided their parent trees with as many photosynthesizing leaves as possible in the shortest amount of time.
These hopeful, regenerative ‘epicormic’ survivors currently stand out in stark contrast against those vast swaths of timber that burned too hot for any latent buds to survive and sprout. In most of the burned forest, only underbrush is coming back, thus far. Sure, you can see the occasional seedling, here and there, but it seems as if the fire within most of the burn was too hot for ‘epicormic buds’ and even basal buds to have survived.
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Six years later: some of these charred trees have made such stunning comebacks after their baptisms by fire one can scarcely imagine anyone recognizing them as ‘survivors’ after another few years of growth. It is a wonder to behold if your eyes are so inclined, a thing of renewal and beauty. And hope.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with us.
I have so loved these epicormic learnings, David. They are as moving as they are fascinating. As Blake would say, "life delights in life".
So much love in your text and photos!
Have you read "The Overstory" - a love story about trees and their importance to the earth and to human life? Highly recommend.