coast redwood forest

Too dry for redwood sorrel?

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I recently walked with a childhood friend through Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, one of the only old coast redwood forests left in Sonoma County. It certainly felt like fall, with the sunlight low in the sky as midday approached. …

Life on the leaf’s edge

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Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Nature will bear the closet inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.” His words eloquently describe a field of research that would …

RCCI researchers Chris Wong and Wendy Baxter monitor the seedlings. Photo by Anthony Ambrose.

The Seedling-Drought Experiment and Its Surprising Result

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Last week, I spent some time wondering broadly about our recent RCCI results, and just whether we could say for certain that 1) climate change is spurring an increase in redwood growth, and 2) if that change is “good” for …

A Summer of Ferns

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The best part of the year for any field ecologist like myself, is the stretch of long summer days spent outside collecting data. Over the past two months, I journeyed into the coast redwood forest to take measurements in our …

Climbing at Dawn

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Today is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. Often the summer solstice makes me think of long evenings and late sunsets, but of course dawn comes incredibly early too. Today, I remember my earliest morning …

Where have all the flowers gone?

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“Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing.”  -Pete Seeger Over 170 years ago, early loggers began extracting redwood from the San Francisco bay area. The trees they cut were monumental and today we can still find the remnant stumps …

Redwoods at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show

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This week, a redwood forest came alive at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show. Our partners, the Garden Club of America, celebrated their centennial with an lush exhibit featuring understory ferns and flowers of the coast redwood forest. Large translucent photographs …

I Smell Cyanide!

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The fantastic yellow-spotted millipede, Harpaphe haydeniana, roams freely through the coast redwood forest. Often found crawling in the duff on the forest floor, H. Haydeniana is multi-legged invertebrate that demands respect. When it senses danger, this millepede curls up in a ball …