Gardengal, Seriously, I don't get my info from Wikipedia which is probably the worst place on the net to get correct information. First of all, I have 5 Giant Sequoia, so I have studied about them from various sources for years. I also have been to California several times to see them and this was during the winter and early spring, not just thevsummer and I can assure many areas get flooded. Most people and photos you see are people that go during the summer (dry season) when the water level drops. There are huge giant sequoia growing smack in the middle of a creek in a gravel bed estimated over 1000 years old. The info I refrenced is from the website of the #1 grower of giant sequoias in the United States. For one, technically there is no sandy loam in the Sierra Nevada, it's alluvial granite. Second, the mature trees need thousands of gallons a water a day to survive, they are not getting that from JUST "moist soil", they have a massive source of water at all times. Third, they have a very shallow root system for the size of the trees, that means they get most of their water from the just above the soil to about 10 feet below. But your repeating info from a man (John Muir) that first wrote about Giant Sequoia before the 1920's that has been debunked long ago. This is an excerpt from the National Park Service today: "John Muir was perhaps the first writer to single out the role of soil moisture. He found that medium soil moisture is optimal for sequoia growth. The sequoia is never found in any valley exposed to the rush of floods, nor on any hillside so steep and unporous as to shed its soil and rain. It grows always where the deep sandy or loamy soil is capable of holding the winter moisture all the year, or where the rock is full of innumerable fissures and is shaded and cool and moist" (Wolfe 1938). Even though he failed to indicate the necessity of sunlight for seedling development, his assumptions are essentially correct, and many writers have repeated them in modified ways. Invariably, these modifications involve the effect of climatic differences, soil type, depth of organic layer, leaf litter, shading, etc. ***Recent investigations, curiously, do not bear out the belief that rich, deep soils are a necessity for sequoia growth. Observers have tended to compare forest soils to agricultural soils. While crop plants need nutritionally rich as well as moist soils, trees depend mainly upon available soil moisture. The grayish podzolic soils of the Sierra are less than impressive to the serious farmer. Furthermore, many people tend to grossly underestimate the complexity of soils. By and large, Sierran podzolic soils are relatively thin and not abundantly nutritious. With clay a minimal soil constituent, the total moisture-holding capacity of these soils is limited by the amount and distribution of precipitation, subsequent density of vegetation, temperature and relative humidity during the growing season, and the wetability factor of the soil. Sequoias show a strong tendency to favor drainageways where the requisite degree of moisture content is constant. Yet the drier slopes also support sequoia growth wherever the trees can become established (Wulff et al. 1911). Contrary to popular belief, then, soil depth and richness are clearly secondary to soil moisture availability. Sequoia distribution within groves strongly reflects its affinity for soil moisture; a crown that may weigh a ton or more seems to demand it. Muir (1911, 1912) was a proponent of the thought that sequoias created their own moist environment as he wrote below. "It is a mistake to suppose that water is the cause of the groves being there. On the contrary, the groves are the cause of the water being there. The roots of the Big Trees fill the ground forming a sponge which holds the water. The Big Tree is a tree of life, a never-failing spring all through the hot, rainless summer. For every grove cut down, a stream is dried up." Perhaps Muir failed to understand the magnitude of transpiration, i.e., the vegetation "pumping" soil moisture back into the atmosphere. It is true that forest vegetation regulates the yearly flow of water, thus modifying the distribution of runoff and moderating the extremes. Forest trees play an important role in cycling water from the ground back into the atmosphere. Removal of the transpirational pumps, namely, the trees, has often converted a dry forest into a swamp. The patterns of growth- and site-selectivity all bespeak the species' affinity for high soil moisture and reflect the effect of temperature and relative humidity perhaps more than does precipitation alone. The ratio of evaporation potential to precipitation as an environmental factor is important, and its recognition has produced the widespread belief that the sequoia grows best in protected locations where the average annual precipitation is from 45 to 60 inches (Schubert 1952). Rundel (1969) amplified this interpretation somewhat. He found that sequoia stands on northerly slopes have greater density than on slopes of other aspects, although the total number is generally less. It is perhaps perplexing that these trees, admittedly with an affinity for abundant soil moisture, are much more numerous on westerly and southwesterly slopes, which are potentially the drier ones because of the sun's more nearly direct rays. Thus, for example, relatively moist drainage bottoms and meadow margins, although small in their total acreage, support dense stands of sequoias. Even rocky slopes support some 3% of the total sequoia population in the Giant Forest. Contrary to the records of John Muir, large specimens are fairly common on slopes exceeding 30° and we find some on slopes approaching 45°. We conclude that, regardless of a grove's geographical position, this species favors avenues of surface or subsurface drainage. Although surface drainage patterns are obvious, subsurface drainage may be too obscure for visual identification. The Grizzly Giant in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove, a good example, grows on a low ridge which appears well drained, but an apparently abundant subsurface flow of soil water is undoubtedly a major reason for the tree's great size. Evaporation potential is partly a function of temperature. Since temperature decreases with increasing latitude, average temperatures in the north are the same as at higher elevations in the south. Thus, the mean altitude of sequoia groves in the Kaweah Basin to the south is 6600 ft, whereas it is 5400 ft in the northernmost grove. In the northern groves sequoias are found mostly on south-facing slopes; in the southernmost, on north-facing ones. Altitude and direction of slope, then, indirectly reduce water loss from the trees while maintaining an optimum temperature regime for growth. The stream drainage channels are also channels of cold air drainage, especially if they descend from high mountain peaks, so that the value of available moisture must be pitted against the limitations of winter survival when temperatures may drop to sub-survival values. The same drainage channels, however, transport cones and seeds that are carried downslope where grove extensions form long, narrow fingers and occasional detached outliers. In the Mariposa Grove, flooding, not too many years ago, carried seeds along a tributary of Rattlesnake Creek, and today there are numerous thriving young sequoias mostly at high flood level on either side of the creek. No parent trees grow above them, although some are so close to the drainage divide that chickarees might have carried the cones into the other drainage basin to eat them. Perhaps the best-known and most classical grove extension is along the South Fork of the Kaweah River below the Garfield Grove. A dozen sequoias line the river bank at elevations as low as 2800 ft��"one specimen growing on a gravel bar in the river channel, a most unlikely site (Fig. 29). The altitude is the lowest known in the world for a naturally seeded giant sequoia. An increment boring indicates that this tree was seeded in the middle 1880s, when a torrential flood also floated huge sequoia logs through the town of Visalia some 40 miles to the west in the San Joaquin Valley." I can go on and on with info, but as they point out with this statement: "We conclude that, regardless of a grove's geographical position, this species favors avenues of surface or subsurface drainage. Although surface drainage patterns are obvious, subsurface drainage may be too obscure for visual identification". Surface drainage is from water draining off the surface from rain, snow or flooding from creeks, rivers etc.. Sub surface is obviously from springs, cracks and fissures pumping water upward or a high water table. from the original poster: "In the dry of summer the water table drops to 2' down. Rest of year it's about a foot or less below grade. After a good rainstorm there will be 2-3" puddles that last for days even weeks." I see no indication of swampy area here. Puddles does not mean swamp and after a good rain storm in the Giant Sequoia groves you will see puddles that last for a awhile. I do not see any indication the water in the area is from run off or a collection point. She indicates she is in the mountains, that's exactly the same growing conditions as a Giant Sequoia. In addition, her summer water table is fairly typical of a sequoia grove water table that's not on a mountainside.

I'd probably have to say that trees with exotic trunks, bark or flowers are the ones that I prefer. One tree that combines all of these attributes in one tree is Brazilian Floss Silk tree, Chorisia speciosa. I find the sculptural bright green trunks with heavy thorns, towering size and vivid orchid pink blooms in winter when the trees are almost leafless is something that appeals to me in winter. Another similar blooming subtropical tree is the entire Tabebuia genus, which has so many species that light up the forest when they bloom at the end of the dry season in places like the west coast of southern Mexico or Brazil. Tabebuia chrysotricha and T. impetiginosa are pretty magnificent even as ordinary street trees as seen around southern California. But perhaps my most perfect tree is actually a palm, Cocos nucifera, which is the essence of the tropics, and looks as good as a young plant, or by the thousands lining tropical shores. Not only is it beautiful, but so supremely useful for food, water, building materials, and to string up a hammock and enjoy the shade and breeze off the ocean. Favortie trees that are less tropical, would include those with such beautiful smooth bark as our native Madrone, Arbutus menziesii, or the much easier to grow hybrid, A. 'Marina', which is almost never without bloom or colorful fruit, and has such graceful, twisting and sinuous branching and lovely smooth deep cinnamon bark. Lemon Gum Eucalyptus, E. citriodora is also in this category, with the smooth peeling bark that reveals the powdery white trunks, the statuesque form and wonderfully fragrant citrusy foliage are not bad either. If I had to only pick natives, there are so many here in California that have their own special charm. Valley Oaks, Quercus lobata can be so strongly dramatic in profile in winter, sentinels in the landscape and so provident for wildlife. Really old Coast Live Oaks, Quercus agrifolia can be just as dramatic as a Southern Live Oak for imparting atmosphere and a connection with the past. The California Buckeye, Aesculus californica is also wondrous in winter with its contorted smooth gray branches that contrast so well against both the green hillsides of spring, or the tawny golden hillsides of fall, and the way it is the first to leaf out, often as early as February, and the massively showy blooms later in May. Coast Redwoods commingled with Douglas Firs, Madrones and Big Leaf Maples are also all beautiful in their own right, especially when viewed as a mountain backdrop in the coast hills, and are original growth. There are so many other California native forests and trees that have their own impressive beauty, such as the forests of Monterey Pines and Monterey Cypress on the Monterey Peninsula, or Ponderosa Pines up in the Sierras, with their massive trunks with fragrance of vanilla on a hot day, and such large distinctive cones. Lastly, the Australian imports such as Eucalyptus viminalis and E. globulus have their own charm when seen as remnant windbreaks or boulevard plantings from the turn of the last century, and even more so when they catch the fog and drip it down to those below, effectively mining the clouds of their moisture. I wouldn't want one in my own garden, (for lack of space and unwillingness to have to keep up with the constantly shedding debris), but they are beautiful from a distance. So many trees have their own particular charm, and it is a pity that there are not more mature urban plantings for everyone to really appreciate the beauty that trees can add to a landscape. I often feel fortunate to have grown up on the San Francisco peninsula, in the era that the grand estates with their vast plantings of exotic trees from around the world were still there, and being able to wander the hills as a boy with his dog, and take it all in.

Reproduction of giant sequoia is spotty at best, even in its native groves in the Sierra Nevada of CA. I don't have my reference book on the matter before me now, but a number of the groves consist of very old trees only and have zero reproduction. And those that do have some fair amount of reproduction, this reproduction is not resulting in much, if any expansion of the groves beyond the boundaries outlined by the very oldest trees. In all my hiking through the groves, the only place where I would say reproduction is anything like abundant is where the old trees were logged and the area subsequently burned. One of the best areas to see this reproduction is in the old logged Boole Tree Grove in the Converse Basin (originally one of the finest of all the groves), but I can't at this point remember well enough to say that the reproduction even there has been adequate enough to ensure the new grove will be as large as the one destroyed by the logging/fire. Fire seems to aid reproduction, but virtually all of the old groves have had fire run through them at fairly frequent intervals--usually one or more times each century--but even this frequency of fire which would favor conditions for seed germination has not resulted in any reproduction in many of the groves for literally hundreds of years. And this lack of reproduction cannot be explained by any reduction in the percentage of fertile seed from very old trees. I have read that giant sequoia trees are one of a very few kinds of trees where fertility does not decrease with age. I really have not heard any good explanation for the lack of natural reproduction in so many of the sequoia groves and its general lack of abundance anywhere in its natural range. --Spruce

Well, we did head up to the Nantahala Saturday morning bright and early; was supposed to head out early last Thursday but it was raining big time everywhere in the state and not that much better the next day, Friday. But the weather guru on the net was showing western North Carolina was clearing so we hitched up and was gone down the road in the rain. Half way there the rain had quit and the sun was breaking through; reaching the campground by late afternoon it was warm and sunny. Had the popup set-up by 6:00pm and I was in the river wetting a line at 6:05! We had brought some already made beef stew and enjoyed a late evening 7:30pm supper by fireside. Weather could not have been better. Fishing was lousy in that there had been a lot of hard rain and it always seems things have to settle out before the fishing gets serious once again. My experience has always been just before and in the early part of a rain are the best fishing times. Inspite of the poor fishing we had brought our bikes and really enjoyed riding around the area. Had to be back today for an important appointment and so we had to leave when we did; I guess you got to take what time you can get and be greatful for it, but it seems to me on these outings I like at least -5- (FIVE) days campside ... that does not include travel time ... need another day for coming and another day for going! But, like I said, weather was perfect and really enjoyed the relaxed camp time; and we also had a good campfire every night which always adds to the stay. And one other thing - my little camper has the most comfortable sleeping bunks, sleep better in them than I do my own bed at home! So I'd have to add that I really enjoyed some very good, sound sleep! Dale