California: A Complex Trek to the World's Tallest Tree
1/25/00
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Title: A Complex Trek to the World's Tallest Tree
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: January 25, 2000
UKIAH, Calif., Jan. 25 - The world's tallest tree is somewhere ahead
on the trail, and park ranger Karl Poppelreiter is dawdling over a
newt. It's an interesting newt, as newts go, with a nut-brown back
and a bright red belly. But newts are not why a reporter and
photographer have joined Poppelreiter on this cold, drizzly morning
in the redwoods.
THE RANGER has promised, with some hesitation and several
restrictions, to reveal a closely guarded secret: the precise
location of the world's tallest tree.
First, however, he wants his guests to consider newts. And ferns. And
fallen tree trunks. And hollow stumps. Poppelreiter's attention
flashes from one small wonder to another.
"Look at this," he says, tapping a fallen branch 10-foot-high and
stuck in the trail like a javelin. "That's called a widow maker."
Fascinating. But what about the tallest tree?
Oh, yes, the tree. There's something you should know about that tree,
Poppelreiter warns:
"It really doesn't stand out among the rest. The significance of this
particular tree is that it's part of a grove with a large number of
tall trees. This is a wonderful place to come and enjoy creation.
There's no place as lush and beautiful and enjoyable as a redwood
forest."
That's great, Ranger Poppelreiter. Now will you show us the darn
tree?
BIGGEST AT 367 FEET
The biggest. The tallest. The heaviest. There's something big about
our obsession with big, nowhere more so than in the redwood and
sequoia groves of California.
Here, the biggest and tallest trees on Earth draw throngs of nature-
lovers each year, and many pilgrims aren't satisfied until they've
seen the biggest of the big and the tallest of the tall.
Given the lopsided ratio of tree lovers to beloved trees, the most
popular specimens could easily be admired to death if public access
weren't limited.
On the other hand, it's hard to keep the world's tallest tree a
secret.
Measurements made last March confirmed that Mendocino Tree, a coast
redwood growing in Montgomery Woods State Reserve near Ukiah, is the
tallest known tree in the world. It stands 367 feet 6 inches, or five
stories higher than the Statue of Liberty.
SEEING THE FOREST
Since then, Poppelreiter has had no end of tall troubles: nosy
journalists, "tree baggers" eager to check off a new champion on
their lists, local residents jealous of their privacy, tour companies
seeking another roadside attraction.
Through it all, he has tried to get people to look past the trees and
see the forest. Big is a matter of perspective, he explains, more
significant to humans than to nature. A towering redwood may inspire
awe, he says, but even more inspiring is the web of life to which it
belongs.
The usual response: That's swell, Ranger Poppelreiter. Now which way
to the world's tallest tree?
Things could be worse. A century ago, California's biggest redwoods
usually were measured and admired only after they were cut down. Only
5 percent of the original redwood forest remains today, mostly in
public parks and reserves.
Preservation has brought its own abuses - the kind born of good
intentions. There are drive-through redwood trees, their bases
hollowed out to accommodate cars. Other trees are encircled by fences
and paved trails. Having grown anonymously for centuries, every
notable redwood now has a name: Boy Scout Tree. Watermelon Tree. Slot
Machine Tree.
Some visitors pry off bits of bark as souvenirs. And there's
something about a huge tree that compels people to link hands and
surround it, all the while packing down the soil around its roots.
PAST TALLEST TREES
In 1963, the National Geographic Society went hunting for the world's
tallest tree and found a redwood standing 367 feet 10 inches tall.
Publicity about that colossus, promptly christened Tall Tree, helped
the campaign to establish Redwood National Park. But publicity also
brought crowds, which may explain why Tall Tree is no longer the
tallest.
"So many people have stood on the base of the tree that the ground is
hard-packed," says Steve Sillett, a botany professor at Humboldt
State University. "Not surprisingly, by the 1970s, 10 to 15 feet of
the tree's top was dead and dying. By the 1990s, 10 feet of its top
had fallen away."
In 1991, a redwood called National Geographic Tree, not far from Tall
Tree, was declared the new champ, at 365 feet 6 inches. Then, in
December 1996, a fresh contender was discovered in an unexpected
place: Montgomery Woods State Reserve, a small, little-known park 12
miles west of Ukiah along a narrow road of hairpin turns.
DOCUMENTARY RENEWS INTEREST
Farther inland than most reserves sheltering tall redwoods,
Montgomery Woods was surrounded by a scrubby forest of oak and
madrona. But deep in a narrow valley, rooted in rich alluvial soil
and moistened by a meandering creek, stood an 80-acre grove of
giants.
Among them was Mendocino Tree. Redwood lovers already knew it was
tall, but no one knew just how tall until a laser range finder pegged
it at just under 368 feet.
Based on that measurement, Mendocino Tree was listed in the 1998
Guinness Book of Records as the world's tallest living tree. The book
even mentioned that it grew in Montgomery Woods. But the short
paragraph, buried among other curiosities - longest conga line, most
tattoos - sparked no tourist stampede.
Reassured by this indifference, Sillett agreed to participate last
March in a documentary funded by the Save the Redwoods League. As
cameras rolled, he climbed Mendocino Tree and confirmed its height
with a weighted measuring tape. It stood 367 feet 6 inches tall -
indisputably the world's tallest.
With everyone involved vowing not to reveal the tree's location,
Sillett thought he'd found the best of two worlds: The inner circle
of tree fanciers had a new champion to study and celebrate, but the
big redwood had escaped the notice of the trampling masses.
This, of course, could not last.
"I guess we were pretty naive," Sillett says now. "I had no idea this
was going to be such a big deal."
REPORTERS FOLLOW
Step by slow step, Ranger Poppelreiter is getting closer to the
world's tallest tree. He ducks under a boxcar-sized log, then crosses
the creek on another fallen giant.
Things have been crazy, he says, ever since the first reporter called
him last June.
Tipped off by a boy who'd been reading the Guinness book, reporter
Mike Geniella of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat asked if Poppelreiter
would guide him to the world's tallest tree.
The ranger hemmed and hawed, whereupon Geniella suggested that if
Poppelreiter didn't help, sooner or later someone else would.
Poppelreiter relented, figuring he could at least educate people
about biodiversity and forest ecology.
The front-page headline on June 4 missed those subtleties. "World's
tallest tree near Ukiah," it declared, next to a big picture showing
the ranger staring up at the tree.
STAMPEDE BEGINS
Late that night, a couple walked up to the front desk at Orr Hot
Springs resort, two miles from Montgomery Woods, and asked: Which way
to the world's tallest tree?
The stampede had begun.
From June through September, 15,300 people visited the reserve,
double the usual number, Poppelreiter says. People were spotted
walking the mile-long loop trail, newspaper in hand, trying to match
the picture to a tree.
The small parking lot started overflowing on weekends. The pit toilet
filled up faster. Tour-group operators called Poppelreiter, asking if
they could bring in busloads of tourists. A Japanese film company
wanted to drive a boom truck into the grove.
So far, Poppelreiter has fended off all proposals for industrial-
strength tourism. The road to the reserve is too narrow for tour
buses, he says, and the trail to the grove is too steep for frail
walkers.
NO SIGNS
On Poppelreiter's orders, there are no signs or arrows pointing to
the tree. What's more, he is the only park employee who knows where
Mendocino Tree is. Other staffers prefer not to know, he says, so
they don't have to lie to visitors.
This don't-tell approach is not universally popular. "As a `tree-
hugging,' redwood-loving taxpayer, I feel I have a right to know and
see ... the new tallest tree," one frequent visitor complained in a
letter to Poppelreiter.
But other locals think things should be even more secretive. Road
signs to the park have a habit of disappearing. At Orr Hot Springs,
employees don't know or won't tell where the tallest tree is.
Poppelreiter says he understands the popular preoccupation with the
biggest and tallest.
"It's our culture," he shrugs. "We're competitive." But the subject
of big, he notes, is more complicated than many people appreciate.
Consider the General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia growing in Sequoia
National Park. Shorter than many coast redwoods, it nonetheless has a
greater volume of wood - 52,500 cubic feet - than any other tree.
For decades, it was recognized as the largest living thing on Earth,
but only because organisms not clearly visible were excluded from the
equation. In recent years, scientists have reported life forms far
bigger, if less charismatic, than a redwood or sequoia.
A single underground fungus grows beneath 1,500 acres of forest in
Washington state. In Utah, a 106-acre grove of quaking aspens,
genetically identical and growing from the same root system, was
recognized last year by Guinness as the "plant with the greatest
mass."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/ENVIRONMENT_Front.aspMSNBC environment
coverage
IS GROVE ONE TREE?
Poppelreiter notes that most redwoods sprout from the roots of
established trees, not from seeds, so it's possible that DNA testing
could show the entire Montgomery Woods grove to be one gigantic
organism, as if each towering tree were no more than a hair on the
same head.
But enough of science. The ranger knows why his guests are here. He
stops along the trail and stares into the forest. There, he
announces. The world's tallest tree.
Where? A dozen stout trunks soar skyward, vanishing into the canopy.
From this vantage point, any one of them could be the tallest.
One fat specimen seems a likely candidate, but Poppelreiter points to
a skinnier trunk nearby. At 10 feet in diameter, Mendocino Tree is a
mere beanpole compared with some of its neighbors. Mossy ridges of
bark the size of railroad ties spiral up the trunk, pointing toward
the first branch, 190 feet up.
There is more that could be said about Mendocino Tree. But at
Poppelreiter's insistence, that's as much as can be revealed here.
"If this tree can represent the redwoods and their imminent peril,
then this tree has done a good thing," he says. "If I can protect
this tree and the area around it from overuse, then I've done a good
thing."
Sooner or later, lightning will strike or an ill wind will blow
through Montgomery Woods, and another redwood in some other grove
will become the world's tallest tree.
The crowds here will thin. The pit toilet will fill up more slowly.
And Ranger Poppelreiter will breathe a record-breaking sigh of
relief.
David Foster is the AP's Northwest regional reporter, based in
Seattle.