California Redwoods Miraculously Regrow After Wildfire Devastation
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The Big Basin Redwood State Park in Santa Cruz, California, is home to some of the tallest and oldest redwood trees on Earth. The towering trees reach heights of over 300 feet (91 m) and have an incredibly thick bark. This natural armor usually protects their upper branches and needles from wildfire damage. However, the CZU Lightning Complex Fire that burned 97 percent of the park in August 2020 was so intense that it even scorched these ancient giants.
But in a remarkable turn of events, the charred redwoods began to sprout fresh green needles within months after the fires were extinguished. Intrigued by their rapid recovery, a team led by Drew Peltier, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, decided to investigate. What they discovered was stunning.
The researchers, who published their findings in late 2023, found that the redwoods have two additional strategies to cope with adversity. First, they store excess energy from leaf photosynthesis. This helps sustain them when no leaves are present to produce new energy, as was the case with the charred trees.
Even more impressive, a process called radiocarbon dating revealed that the stored energy in the giant redwoods was between 50 and 100 years old. That means it had been created and tucked away for emergencies as early as the 1920s!
The trees' second adaptation is the presence of bud tissue to enable leaf regrowth. By examining the wood beneath the sprouting areas, the researchers traced the tissue to the tree's center. This led them to conclude that the sprouts had grown from tissue nearly as old as the tree itself. In some cases, the trees were over a thousand years old.
"In addition to having really thick bark and extreme tree height, this is just one of those additional adaptations that redwood trees have that make them super-resilient to fire," Peltier said.
The ancient park's full recovery will take years. But with 90 percent of the charred trees already exhibiting signs of regrowth, the outlook is promising.
Resources: loe.org, LiveScience.com, CNN.com
