The Blue Redwoods

from Walking Tractor

A broken redwood stump in a grove of trees with rare sunlight around it

Redwood Snag

Coming Soon ...
September 10th, Wacking Weeds
October 10th, Stomping Fleeces

Ask a person how many different kinds of redwoods grow in the world and, if he or she was educated in California, they’ll probably answer “two.” There’s what’s called the Sequoias growing up in the Southern Sierra and the Redwoods that grow along California’s North Coast. A smart aleck might add that, actually, there’s a third kind that grows in China known as the Dawn Redwood. Though closely related to the others, the Dawn Redwood is a relative dwarf and it is deciduous.

But mention the Blue Redwoods and chances are all you’ll get will be blank stares. Or, with a sniff, you’ll be informed that, scientifically speaking, there is no such thing. And that’d be right when it comes to species but dead wrong when it comes to “strains” or “sub-species.” Fact is the Aptos Blue Redwoods are a scientifically identified strain and they have been for some while. The strain is named after the city of Aptos that’s perched on the Monterey Bay. Squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and the sharp toes of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Aptos is located at the southern end of the Redwood Belt, a slender finger of ocean-hugging primordial forest stretching 500 miles long and sometimes only five miles wide. Because the Coast Redwoods are the earth’s most voracious fog eaters, the trees don’t grow at elevations higher than 3,300 feet above sea level.

Because the Santa Cruz Mountains are so close to San Francisco and to the last stop on the Transcontinental Railroad, the redwoods in the mountains above Aptos were among the first to get chopped down. So it was that up there the Blue Redwoods were first discovered, recorded and studied. Hence the name, Aptos Blue.

One interesting thing about the Blues is that, while they are common in the Santa Cruz Mountains and are sprinkled throughout the Redwood Belt all the way up to the fingernail reaching across the Oregon border, the further north you go the less you see of them. Why that is, nobody knows.

Now if you were to ask an old-timey North Coast hillbilly—a forth generation woodsman born with one leg shorter than the other to help him get along on side hills—what a botanist was, or where the city of Aptos was, chances are all you’d get would be blank stares. Mention to him an arborist and he’ll likely think you’re talking about some kind of city-slicked tree-hugger sitting off in some ivory tower somewhere.

But ask him about the Blue Redwoods and his eyes will light up and he’ll tell you all about them—they’re the damnest, most beautiful things! If you show enough enthusiasm for the subject, he’s taken a shine to you and he’s got the time for it, he’ll offer to take you out into the woods so you can lay your own eyes on some Blues. Around here he might take you up into Dago Gulch, or over to the shady side of Lone Tree Ridge.

But that doesn’t mean the Blue Redwoods ain’t rare or their existence mostly secret. Along with the regular kind of redwoods, over ninety-five percent of the “ancient” Blues got chopped down and baby Blues ain’t near so distinctive. Considering that, above the creek bottoms coursing like veins, the redwoods grow on some of the steepest and slipperiest mountains on earth and, with the passing of the lumberjacks, that huge swaths of forestlands have returned to “untracked wilderness,” it’s not a stretch to say that most folks living on the North Coast nowadays have never even heard of the Blues much less noticed any.

Woodsmen see the redwoods better than other people do. To an outsider the redwoods seem tall, round, fat and pretty. They are scenery only. Parkland trails through remnant groves of giant redwoods are fine and even the least of them can make all but the most citified folks feel like they’re passing through God’s own wondrous creation. And that’s good, very good. But the real forest is off the trail and up on the steep ground where a person feels fortunate to find an animal track to set his or her feet on. Unless a person is taking a living from such unforgiving ground, there ain’t much reason to go up there.

But once you’ve worked in the redwoods long enough every tree takes its turn in your eye and every forest sound tells you something. Whether you’re out to fell the giants or their small fry stump shoot offspring, every tree has its own way about it, its own personality and possibilities. Some trees are fat pumpkins waiting to get plucked—seemingly thankful to get plucked (you’re only giving their roots haircuts). Others are “outlaws” that will fight you every step of the way if you’re fool enough to tangle with them. And always in the woods there’s the possibility that you’ll encounter that one tree, that singular tree that’s different from all of the others in the forest. You just might meet the tree that has your name on it.

The Blue Redwoods stick out because they are darker than the ordinary kind of redwoods. Their bark is thicker and more deeply furrowed and shadowy. Their foliage is also a deeper, darker green, the individual needles plump almost like the needles of cedars or junipers. The old-timers say what makes for a grove of Blues is the bountiful groundwater they are tapped into, an underground reservoir of upwelling, nutrient-filled liquid, and their needles feel heavy with it. Pick off a sprig of needles and hold their undersides up against a cloudless sky and they will show blue.

Stand back at a distance and a grove of Blues appears saturated, sodden and over-ripe. Not only is the foliage fatter and darker, but there is more of it, so much more that the trunks of the trees are hidden behind heavy hanging curtains of it. Tall, erect, sturdy and yet shaggy, from afar a grove of Blues on the skyline can look like a grazing wooly mammoth.

But it is how they appear out of the dawn that gives the Blues their name. When the first light of day reaches them and the fog is lifting, when the hanging foliage seems to be steaming and wisps of ground fog are swirling upward like campfire smoke, when the frost on the meadow grass shines white and the shadows are shrinking, that’s when the trees radiate blue; pure watery blue.