At the corner of a road near us, I have been admiring a large conifer for some time, for some years even. Then yesterday it dawned on me that maybe it was a juvenile Wellingtonia.
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| Juvenile? |
I had been confused by the shape, being more used to the more cylindrical, very distinctive shape of the mature trees. See, for example, reference 2. There was also the issue of the colour of the trunk, not the distinctive red I expect.
Back home, I asked Bing about young sequoia and assembled the snap following.
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| Bing's young trees |
With the story here seeming to be that conical was OK, with the tree on the right perhaps being what happens when you get slow growth in an open, exposed position.
Then there was the question of the needles.
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| Needles |
After further consultation with Bing, the verdict was that the needles of the candidate capture in the middle panel were consistent with those both to the right and to the left. The latter being a detail from an earlier, confirmed capture.
In the end we thought it reasonable to score the juvenile as a Wellingtonia. It only remains to buttonhole the owner and ask him - although BH thinks that the tree was already there when he arrived so he may not know. Or he may not know any better than us.
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