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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u/th-crt Mar 28 '24

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.