Giant Sequoia

An evergreen tree with dense foliage (more bushy than the Coast Redwood) that is gray-green. Branchlets are clothed with short, overlapping, scale-like leaves with sharp points. The bark is reddish-brown and similar to that of the Coast Redwood. Native only to west slope of the Sierra Nevada from Placer to Tulare County, this species has the most massive trunk in the world. One of the tallest trees, it can reach 325 feet in height with 30-foot trunk diameter. In former geologic periods this species was widely scattered through the forests of the Northern Hemisphere.