Mother of the Forest

The ancient redwoods in Big Basin state park are not gone.

…an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Monday and confirmed most of the ancient redwoods had withstood the blaze. Among the survivors is one dubbed Mother of the Forest.

“That is such good news, I can’t tell you how much that gives me peace of mind,” said Laura McLendon, conservation director for the Sempervirens Fund, an environmental group dedicated to the protection of redwoods and their habitats.

The infrastructure is destroyed.

“But the forest is not gone,” McLendon said. “It will regrow. Every old growth redwood I’ve ever seen, in Big Basin and other parks, has fire scars on them. They’ve been through multiple fires, possibly worse than this.”

When forest fires, windstorms and lightning hit redwood trees, those that don’t topple can resprout. Mother of the Forest, for example, used to be 329 feet tall, the tallest tree in the park. After the top broke off in a storm, a new trunk sprouted where the old growth had been.

Trees that fall feed the forest floor and become nurse trees from which new redwoods grow. Forest critters, from banana slugs to insects, thrive under logs.

They’re called semper virens for a reason.

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