Tall Trees Walking Tour Stop 12

For most visitors the complexity of life existing high in the redwood canopies can only be imagined.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Location:

41.21059873920, -124.01048211900

The Biodiversity You Do Not See

There is so much wonder to embrace in this grove, so many cycles of nature to witness; but what about all those things hidden from us? High above in the redwood canopy, beyond the focus of the naked eye, are multiple layers of life. Marbled murrelets, flying squirrels, tree voles, and wandering salamanders have all adapted to life in the redwood canopy.  A plethora of plant species can grow in the soil mats found in the "elbows” of treetop limbs.  Western hemlock and bay laurel trees have been found growing over 100 of feet in the forest canopy!

Did you know some species of lichen and mosses only grow at different altitudes along the length of a redwood? Lettuce lung lichen, a nitrogen-fixer, acts as an important fertilizer for the redwood forest. Every winter, powerful winds tear it from the canopy, and send it falling to the ground below. This frilled, leafy, silvery-green lichen only grows up high in the tallest of trees! Imagine how many hundreds of years it will take for a second-growth forest to provide a habitat for this uniquely adapted species to live.

The biodiversity you cannot see flourishes not only above you, but below you as well. Countless species of fungi, bacteria, and macro-invertebrates inhabit the soil here: consuming, decomposing, recycling the richness of the forest. Fungi spread through soil via mycelium, vast networks of spongy, filament-like threads through which the fungus feeds. The banana slugs that slowly munch on the mushrooms of some of these fungi live their lives at a completely different pace. There’s certainly no rush, not when you are on redwood time.