tree reproduction

["Louise Burton" <firedancefarms@prodigy.net>]

Some of yall asked me a very good question.  Why can't the giant sequoia
reproduce?  Well, I decided to just go look that one up today...and what I
found was very interesting.  Bottom line:  they need a VERY hot fire!  They
thought they had young ones, 3 feet tall, and found out by aging them, they
were 100 years old.  Evidently we haven't had new ones since John
Muir...when a big hot fire went through.  So....ha...and here is the
delimma....do we let a hot fire burn..kill everything except the big
sequoias to let the young ones grow or not?
Here is a quote from the USGS from Sept 1999 report:

The loss of fire in sequoia groves has greatly affected the population.
"Fire exclusion by humans has done more than the last three millennia of
climate and fire regime changes," Stephenson says. "Essentially, when you
exclude fire, sequoia reproduction crashes to zero." That means that in
sequoia groves today, even the youngest trees are over a century old. Most
areas in most groves have not burned for 100-130 years.


Food for thought.

Louise Burton
Firedance Farms Endurance Arabians
Oklahoma
http://pages.prodigy.net/firedancefarms