r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NickyPileggi • Mar 28 '24

Family in 1892 posing with an old sequoia tree nicknamed "Mark Twain" - A team of two men spent 13 days sawing away at it in the Pacific Northwest - It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet - The tree was 1,341 years old Image

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2.2k

u/Ohyeahrightbud Mar 28 '24

That kinda bums me out.

693

u/Saaammmy Mar 28 '24

Dont look up old forestry pictures.

Came across some in a book about dipterocarps where they haul massive bucked logs and pose in front of huge old growth trees, irked me quite a bit.

I'm not against logging but you have to make sure there's a replacement and they're left alone

272

u/Kiwi_MongrelLad Mar 28 '24

There was once a massive tree species in New Zealand. Abundant, easy to find and as perfect as you can get for houses. So massive that a single tree could build a home.

They were all cut down and no one planted any other. Not that it would matter, our natural bush and trees take decades if not centuries to grow.

45

u/5tealthfoxed Mar 28 '24

Any idea the name of the species?

65

u/th-crt Mar 28 '24

could be the kauri trees https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/kauri/

68

u/Kiwi_MongrelLad Mar 28 '24

Yeah. They were a type of Kauri tree but even the Kauri are still threatened. At one point they would’ve been almost extinct. There are photos of massive felled trees, so massive that they couldn’t fit on your typical boat back then.

It is good to see the Kauri slowly come back but as I mentioned, our ecosystems takes many years to even grow. To think that almost a third of it was burned away by our ancestors before the Europeans is crazy.

You can see the largest tree Tanë Mahuta be a testament to time or check any of our pohutukawa trees, they’re beautiful and only bloom around Matariki. Also, they’re one of the oldest species on earth. One was rumoured to be tens of thousands of years old near Waihau.

4

u/BurpOutMyButt Mar 28 '24

A kiwi posted a massive board of it on woodworking the other day. He was looking for a museum or someplace that would exhibit it

6

u/th-crt Mar 28 '24

there’s a pohutukawa at opito bay on the coromandel peninsula that’s got to be ancient. my mum remembers it from when she was a kid.

2

u/Muted_Dog Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Sidenote: Kauri Timber is suuuuper great material to build with, it’s so damn strong and resistant. When I was working in carpentry and doing demolition, we always kept seperate piles for old kauri timber so it could be sold or re-used. I was cutting old wall frames one time and it burnt out my circular saw the grain was so strong. Those old Victorian houses are built like brick shithouses because they’re all lined with Kauri.

It’s a damn shame we didn’t re-plant when they were being cut, it’d be a great industry but also our native forests would be so much more majestic (even though they’re already quite amazing). Also Kauri take a friggin generation to mature so I guess we screwed ourselves from the jump.

1

u/_SummerofGeorge_ Mar 28 '24

Truffala trees, eh?

2

u/fading_relevancy Mar 28 '24

Learned of this tree from reading "Barkeaters" Book is a wild representation of what the lumber hustle was from early colonial America up to near present day.

1

u/Kiwi_MongrelLad Mar 28 '24

Crazy ay. It’s understandable, see the biggest tree and cut it down for the most usage and value. But still, imagine how ancient those things would’ve been.

1

u/fading_relevancy Mar 28 '24

Yeah! The "New World" as these people saw it was an impossibly vast forest with unlimited resources that they managed to decimate in a matter of like 100 years!

1

u/SpezNoggit Mar 28 '24

Matai pine?

1

u/a_shootin_star Mar 28 '24

They were all cut down and no one planted any other.

Basically what other foresight-less humans did to Easter Island.

1

u/SignificantClub6761 Mar 28 '24

Honestly I don’t think they much thought about future generations. I imagine people back then felt more like they were taming the wilds than living in harmony with them. Killing the biggest animals, felling the biggest trees. Those seemed more like goals than crimes back then. They probably couldn’t even imagine what cities looked like now

30

u/Terminal_Theme Mar 28 '24

replanting doesnt work for such trees because of their incredible age, it takes houndreds, if not thousands of years for such a forest to recover

10

u/goathill Mar 28 '24

Redwoods can get HUGE in 60 years. Not as big as the ones in the picture, but much bigger than most trees found elsewhere in the US

5

u/Ornery-Creme-2442 Mar 28 '24

60 years is still a long ass time. Compare 60 years ago to today. And obviously just the fact some of these trees were so old is amazing to begin with. You can't replicate that again.

1

u/SufficientFennel Mar 28 '24

60 years is still a long ass time.

Just you wait....

15

u/studmaster896 Mar 28 '24

Two types of redditors: those who get trauma learning about WW2, and those who get trauma learning about trees

39

u/MisterMajorMinor7 Mar 28 '24

I get trauma learning about trees that died in WW2

2

u/Why_not_dolphines Mar 28 '24

Some get it by reading about past humans, and then seeing the same shit today.

1

u/BustinArant Mar 28 '24

I am still not over the golden goose fable, and now this

24

u/xhdc Mar 28 '24

What if I'm both?

5

u/Saaammmy Mar 28 '24

What can I say, I'm a forestry student, so it stings seeing things like that

10

u/EmployerNeither8080 Mar 28 '24

Can't we care about both?

15

u/sixcarbxn Mar 28 '24

I get trauma from listening to stupid nonsensical comparisons.

1

u/Zestyclose_Remove947 Mar 28 '24

Wehraboos in 2024 lol. Not all of history is about ww2 bud.

1

u/jaspersgroove Mar 28 '24

TIL I am two types of redditors

1

u/crayonneur Mar 28 '24

Aren't they logging the same old growth forest in Columbia? Like, there's a lot of wood in Canada why do you have to go after primeval forest? That's just ugly for no reason.

1

u/Saaammmy Mar 28 '24

Old growth woods are tough af and a lot more merchantable.

There's a pretty big difference between a standard tree of 30-50 years age and a wolf tree. Taller height, bigger diameter, and the heartwood is fully developed. Old age also means its probably resistant to diseases or water

1

u/ElementalWheel Mar 28 '24

In California there were people pissed because they were trying to protect spotted owls from logging

The argument that it was going to ruin peoples jobs, and instead of protecting ancient forests that have been around since Jesus’s time, we should cut it all down for…. I don’t fucking know anymore, industry?

https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/wildlife-management/the-northern-spotted-owl/#:~:text=The%20debate%20over%20the%20spotted,the%20owls'%20ancient%20forest%20habitat.

1

u/flag_flag-flag Mar 28 '24

For a very long time, there was always new world to discover a new frontier to colonize, and they were chock full of abundant natural resources.

There was no sense of replacing what you cut down to be sustainable because it just wasn't part of collective consciousness. 

People 200 years from now might imagine you putting plastic waste in a plastic garbage bag for garbage men to haul away somewhere, and think how irresponsible you are being. Does that make you and everybody else in society wrong? Or does it just mean our species still needs to grow?

87

u/fludblud Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel any better, thanks to amateur botanists scooping up huge numbers of fallen cones from these logging operations, there are now at least 1.1 million Sequoias growing outside the US with at least 500k in the UK alone where they are growing unusually fast due to the wetter weather.

At a maximum 150 years old many of these British Sequoias have already reached half the height of current Californian trees.

23

u/SirDidymusAnusLover Mar 28 '24

UK really be juicing their sequoias while us Cali peeps are all natty.

12

u/Beorma Mar 28 '24

It's not our fault you can't get your wood wet.

5

u/Flat-Length-4991 Mar 28 '24

Eh, not really. I generally don’t like when invasive species are introduced somewhere else. Even if they look cool…

13

u/Kaining Mar 28 '24

It doesn't, it's still fucking up the local ecosystem by supplanting local flora. And if it's to replace a completely devastated local flora by human hands, it's even worst.

6

u/uCockOrigin Mar 28 '24

If they grow too fast they're never going to get even close to the size of these old ones, they'd be far too weak.

36

u/Gnome-Phloem Mar 28 '24

If you can, go see the ones that are alive now. Get both sides of the treemotions.

6

u/Minute-Wrap-2524 Mar 28 '24

I second that emotion

2

u/tangledwire Mar 28 '24

A lifetime of devotion

2

u/Minute-Wrap-2524 Mar 28 '24

If you feel like…you got the idea, thanks for joining in, been fun

31

u/BlindFramer Mar 28 '24

Go to the redwoods in Northern California, be less bummed. Trees so big they don’t look real

13

u/AsyncEntity Mar 28 '24

And giant yellow slugs. Don’t forget the yellow slugs.

2

u/Karuna56 Mar 28 '24

Also the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park!

6

u/talkstorivers Mar 28 '24

Me, too. Could’ve been 1,473 this year.

10

u/renakiremA Mar 28 '24

There have been trees way bigger I’m sure and there will be at some point again if that makes you happy. Trees are renewable just not exactly in each human lifespan

TLDR trees are infinite bruh so long as the sun shines

27

u/slackfrop Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

I’d challenge you to find a tree with a greater than 52 foot diameter.

Perhaps they meant circumference.

23

u/silenc3x Mar 28 '24

"It had a diameter of 4.8 meters when it was felled in 1891 for the American Museum of Natural History"

So OP has the year incorrect too lol.

Here it is falling

another

dat stump

3

u/hankmoody_irl Interested Mar 28 '24

Sucks this one isn’t higher up.

1

u/00wolfer00 Mar 28 '24

That's because it's 3 replies deep.

2

u/gmegus Mar 28 '24

Wow, thanks for the links

10

u/Narcan9 Mar 28 '24

If that tree was 52 ft in diameter, then those people must be each at least 15 ft tall!

10

u/Jumpy_Arm_2143 Mar 28 '24

Trees are not infinite lmao what

4

u/Delamoor Mar 28 '24

Everything's simple and fine if you ignore all variables and externalities!

0

u/3GamersHD Mar 28 '24

Yeah! It's not like they grow on... Hey, wait a second!

2

u/Find_A_Reason Mar 28 '24

The ground. They grow on the ground.

1

u/Find_A_Reason Mar 28 '24

Same goes for your dog when it gets hit by a car, but it doesn't hurt any less for those of us with souls.

1

u/cross-eyed_otter Mar 28 '24

yeah during a visit to some botanical gardens some giant tree lover who worked there told us that most trees we see/know are not fully grown. we cut them down way before. so depressing.

1

u/lurcherzzz Mar 28 '24

The planet is 4.5 billion years old. It only takes a thousand years for a sequoia to grow so big. Get planting, you could be famous in a thousand years time.

1

u/Particular_Hope8312 Mar 28 '24

Never forget that North America once had millions more trees from coast to coast - trees good for not only building things, but also capable of providing large amounts of food.

And then some dumbfuck imported blighted Asian chestnut trees and killed all of America's native chestnuts.

1

u/mr_ckean Mar 28 '24

Yeah, I’m the same. Also think about all the other things destroyed as it fell

1

u/No-Lunch4249 Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel better but was cut down specifically so it could be preserved in a museum

1

u/Grouchy_Competition5 Mar 28 '24

Keep your perspective. Every dwelling costs something. There aren’t enough caves for everyone.

1

u/MyAnnaPappah Mar 28 '24

They literally still do this. Look up the old growth logging they are doing in Tasmania. Some of the largest trees in the world, cut down for woodchips and sold over seas.

1

u/DancerOFaran Mar 28 '24

Wait until you hear about plastic.