Belfast Botanic Gardens Tree Archive

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.