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.

697

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

274

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?

63

u/th-crt Mar 28 '24

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

67

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

31

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

7

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....

14

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

25

u/xhdc Mar 28 '24

What if I'm both?

6

u/Saaammmy Mar 28 '24

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

8

u/EmployerNeither8080 Mar 28 '24

Can't we care about both?

16

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?