Sequoia Trees
Thanks for joining us!
This episode was written by Kara and voiced by Kara and T.
Episode art was drawn by Jean.
It was originally released in July 2024.
— We love these books about sequoia trees —
Click on each photo for a link to the book
Try doing a tree drawing!
Find a cool tree in the neighborhood.
Draw one picture of it from far away, including the trunk up through the leaves.
Then find one detail and focus a second drawing on just that part!
— Sequoia Episode Summary —
Sequoia trees are VERY big —
They are so big that even a group of 20 children, holding hands, in a hug around the tree, wouldn’t fit all the way around it!
The blue whale is the largest animal. The elephant is the largest land animal. The Burj Khalifa building is the tallest in the world. And the Sequoia trees are the largest living, growing things on Earth.
Sequoia trees can be over 300 feet high – as large as a tall building with 20 floors.
Their nickname is the “skyscraper of the forest”.
They are tall and very wide. A sequoia can be as much as 100 feet around!
And old! —
The oldest sequoia trees are also some of the oldest living things on earth.
They are older than your parents and older than your grandparents. They are older than any animal living now. That’s incredible!
The oldest sequoia tree still growing is 3,200 years old.
Sequoias share certain parts with other trees —
Roots – They spread out under the ground, hold the tree in the ground, and help bring water and food from the soil up to the rest of the tree.
Bark on the Trunk – The bark of a sequoia is special because it doesn’t catch on fire easily if there was a wildfire. It’s also very thick and it protects the tree’s inside against heat from a fire. The bark of the sequoia is reddish-brown, like cinnamon, making it a member of the family of redwood trees.
Branches – That grow out from the trunk. The branches on sequoia trees don’t start growing at the bottom; they are very far up the trunk. Some sequoia branches are so thick around, that if a tall person laid down next to the branch, the branch would be thicker than the person is tall!
Leaves – Are pointed and grow in a spiral around the stems. They might fall off if they get dry, but they usually hold on and are green all the time. They don’t change colors in the fall, making sequoia evergreen tress.
Seeds in Pinecones – A fully-grown sequoia tree can have 11,000 pine cones! And in those pine cones, live the seeds. The seeds fall into the dirt, and if the weather is right, the soil is wet, the sun is shining, and not too many other trees are in the way, a baby sequoia tree can grow.
Sequoia trees naturally grow in the forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California —
They can live there high in the mountains because the mountain area gets the dry warm weather they need and the ground there holds the water when it rains.
Over the years, sequoia trees have been planted to grow outside of this part of California, in a town or in a garden. Many, many years ago, people collected the pinecones, packed them up carefully and shipped them all around the world so people in other countries could grow them in their parks and gardens. So there are still sequoia trees growing in other places around the world that were from California pine cones 200 years ago.
Sequoia National Park is a National Park – an area set aside by the American government for the preservation of the natural environment.
You can visit the huge sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park. Some of the biggest trees have even been given names! The largest is called “General Sherman” – it’s thought to be 2300-2700 years old. Some other trees are named President, General Grant, Lincoln, King Arthur, and Hercules. You may have heard some of those names, because they are strong people in history or stories.