Friends of Belfast Botanic Gardens

Tree of the month series - this series of short articles about trees in the Belfast Botanic Gardens is compiled by members of the Friends group and Gardens staff. The series will gradually build up to a comprehensive archive of information about the trees in Belfast Botanic gardens. Each article will illustrate the tree in Belfast together with information from a range of sources elsewhere. Click here for the rest of the trees

Tree of the Month, December 2008

Giant Sequoia- Sequoiadendron giganteum

(also called Wellingtonia and Sierra redwood)

by Jonathan Pilcher

There are three "redwoods" - the dawn redwood (Metasequoia), the coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). The Giant sequoia is distinct from the other two as the needles are short and pressed against the stem. In the wild they are found in a few small groves in the Sierra Nevada in California where they reach over 90m height and up to 17m in diameter (see Wikipedia article). They grow well in Ireland and there are already some dramatic trees that look as if they could reach 50 to 80m when they get to maturity. The specimen in the Belfast Botanic Gardens was planted in the mid-1970s in the area just behind the Kelvin statue. It replaces an older tree dating from Victorian planting around the 1890s.  This tree was damaged and
was taken out about 1973 and the present replacement planted

The pollen cones are produced in late autumn and the small female cones are fertilised in winter. The female cones expand in the first year remaining green, then ripen and turn brown in the second year. The trunk tapers to a wide base and the bark is distinctively thick and soft and in the wild affords considerable protection against fire damage.

Giant redwood in Belfast Botanic Gardens - centre next to Dawn redwood in its autumn colouring	Giant redwood trunk (Castleward estate)
Young female cone	Female cone, first year stage
male (pollen) cones of Giant Sequoia	leaves of Giant Sequoia

Photos taken in 2008 in Belfast Botanic Gardens and Castleward estate. Copyright Jon Pilcher