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ShareHidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the largest and tallest organisms the world has ever sustained–the coast redwood trees, Sequoia sempervirens.
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Ninety-six percent of the ancient redwood forests have been destroyed by logging, but the untouched fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature.
The biggest redwoods have trunks up to thirty feet wide and can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air.
Until recently, redwoods were thought to be virtually impossible to ascend, and the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered.
In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbinding story of Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, and the tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, a world that is dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored.
The canopy voyagers are young–just college students when they start their quest–and they share a passion for these trees, persevering in spite of sometimes crushing personal obstacles and failings.
They take big risks, they ignore common wisdom (such as the notion that there’s nothing left to discover in North America), and they even make love in hammocks stretched between branches three hundred feet in the air.The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems that have fused and formed flying buttresses, sometimes carved into blackened chambers, hollowed out by fire, called “fire caves.” Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life that is unknown to science.
For more information about the title The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:
The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter — There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans ... > read more
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss — On dry land, most organisms are confined to the surface, or at most to altitudes of a hundred meters—the height of the tallest trees. In the ... > read more
Remarkable Trees of the World — "A stunning volume" (Time) and the most magnificent book on the world's trees published in years. The publication of Remarkable Trees of the World ... > read more
Fandex Family Field Guides: Trees (Fandex Family Field Guides) — Bringing the world of Trees to your fingertips, Fandex presents a foolproof field guide. Four visual keys - die-cut leaf, bark pattern, flower, nut ... > read moreRecommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
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