TREE TALK | Make way for giants

When we talk about the skyline of city or neighborhood, we usually are speaking of tall buildings or rooftops, perhaps even distant mountains. We have all that in the Pacific Northwest. But here we can add one more element to the equation: trees. 

Our Douglas firs, cedars, spruces and even a few pines tower like skyscrapers as one looks to any horizon in Madison Park. And once in a while, an enormous dark-green cone looms high and mighty: giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). 

Don’t confuse this tree with the California redwood, which also grows tall in Madison Park. That plant, Sequoia sempervirens, is a giant, too — taller but not as wide and conical in form. 

If you’re walking your children to McGilvra Elementary School, you’ll see one of these giant sequoias soaring into the heavens, north of Madison Street and east, a block down the hill from the school. Pause to point it out to the kids and tell them what they are seeing. 

‘Horticultural curiosities’

In its native habitat, the central and south Sierra Nevada of California, this magnificent tree can reach more than 300 feet in height — not quite as tall as our largest, native Douglas firs. But giant sequoia holds the world’s record for massive trunks, up to 30 feet in diameter, and it can live for 3,000 years. All this puts it out of the running for all but the most spacious gardens. 

The tallest of the giant sequoias in and around Seattle likely were planted about 120 or 130 years ago, when the city was young, land was wide open and the trees were small. 

Imported from California, they were considered horticultural curiosities by affluent homeowners interested in gardening. They adapted to our climate quickly and now grow faster, and some speculate they will grow bigger than they do on the slopes of their origin. 

A few nurseries offer giant sequoias. Selected varieties can be found with the dense, slightly prickly foliage in a bluish-gray tone. 

If you have the room, plant one. But give it a spot where it gets maximum sunlight, preferably in the southwest corner of the garden. And it will need rich, quick draining soil. 

If the limbs are left on, all the way down the tree, they become quite large, touching the earth, then swooping up, sometimes even rooting to produce a grove of sequoias. It’s a joy to see children climbing around these behemoth branches. 

And as the tree grows, it’s fair to say it goes from conical to pyramidal. 

A tree grows in Madison Park

I love these trees. Too often, in America, our history (old architecture, family stories, even table manners) vanishes in our rush toward progress. To plant a tree like this now, we can each take part in giving root to living history. 

There’s room for one of these trees in our own Madison Park. To plant one now would be to, yet again, bond our lovely, little community. We’d watch it grow. And centuries hence, children would play on the limbs of this craggy, red-barked tree. Teachers at McGilvra school could show photographs of the day it was planted, as our spirits would hover around the then-ancient and monumental tree. 

If any reader out there would like to do the community a good turn and donate the tree, I say, contact the Madison Park Community Council, who, in turn, will clear it with the city parks department. We then all could watch a little bit of history in the making. 

The future could use an emerging giant.

STEVE LORTON, a Madison Park resident, is former Northwest Bureau chief for Sunset Magazine. To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.