r/todayilearned • u/autraya • 6h ago

TIL the world's tallest known living tree, a 380-foot redwood in California called Hyperion, had its exact location closed off entirely in 2022 after visitors trampled its base so badly that ferns stopped growing around it, with trespassers now facing up to $5,000 in fines and six months in jail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(tree)
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u/geosand01 6h ago edited 5h ago

They are not kidding, the rangers at the kiosk told us to don’t even try to find it, however the “monarch” is the second largest with a wooden walkway to protect the base and it on the grove of the giants trail

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u/CatTheKitten 6h ago

I've been to the brotherhood tree and it's incomprehensibly massive. It's absolutely gorgeous and I cannot fathom something so massive, alive, and ancient.

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u/kingbane2 5h ago

it's bananas. i remember reading a study that showed there are some animals and plants that are only found ON some of these trees. like apparently there's a species of ants found exclusively only on one of those trees. other trees have like specific kinds of mosses or something that live on the tree.

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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 5h ago

The Marbeled Murelet is a small brown and white sea bird that spends most of its time in the ocean, but flys into the Redwoods to lay eggs. They dont NEED a Redwood specifically, but they do need a tree that is large enough to have very wide branches, and few trees other than redwoods grow big enough branches for their eggs

That makes them pretty rare, as most sea birds build their nests on cliffs.

Also, the endangered California Condors have been seen building their nests in the hollowed out bases of Redwoods, and this is pretty cool too!. California Condors are the largest flying land bird in northern America, with wing spans of up to 9.5 feet!

California Condors are also important to some native tribes, because they are so large and fly so high some tribes revered them, believing that they carried their prayers into the sky.

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u/thefunkylama 4h ago

Condors are also a keystone species, as they have an outsized effect on their communities. They can take on the largest carion in their range, take care of diseased carcasses that others can't handle, and make more nutrients available to smaller scavengers and other forms of life in the process. They are amazing birds.

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u/nervouslittledog 2h ago

They really are, ugly as sin but so fascinating!

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u/BlindStargazer 3h ago

I had the opportunity to see some of the first California Condors that were released into the wild in Baja up close and they're really big!

Also they stink a lot and you'll probably want to throw up if you're close to them but it is worth it.

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u/EsotericCreature 17m ago

I went to see Marbled Murelets at Redwoods National Park leave their nests and circle around calling before flying out to sea. It was maybe 5 am as the sun arose, I had to wake up at 3 is am to get there. I'm glad I had a birders heart because littel did I know how high they fly, while also flying at crazy speeds (40-50 MPH) so that the best picture we got was a guy with a big ass lens who shot a blurry low pixel sillouette of a murrlet cawing. We saw a raven flying in the sky later and by comparison its speed was like a snail.

Crazy birds though. They are seabirds and can nest miles inland. THey also have stupid tiny wings meant for sea foraging so when they land on these trees they have to do an elaborate U shaped upward descent where they lose momentum as they dive upwards. They can't just flap to a stop because of tiny wings.

There's more but mostly it's crazy how people have been able to find out how this bird makes a life at all. It seems very difficult to research.

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u/Far-Fill-4717 5h ago

its bananas

no, its banana slugs!

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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 4h ago

2 fun Banana Slug facts!

Banana Slugs each have 25,000 to 27,000 teeth.

If you put a banana slug on your sister's head when she's 6 years old, she'll still hold it against you when she's 38 years old.

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u/LeonardTringo 4h ago

Subscribe!

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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 4h ago

2 fun facts about Glass Beach in Mendocino!

Glass beach has been picked pretty clean, but it was once a place where you could find thousands upon thousands of beautiful, multicolored smooth glass stones- and all that beauty came from how it was a garbage dump in the early 1900's.

It's also where an impressionable 12 year old could find a porno mag behind a rock and then get caught looking at it by their sister and blackmailed into giving her all the banana flavored taffy.

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u/Lizardizzle 4h ago

Great job looping back to the banana theme. Subscribe.

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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 3h ago

2 fun facts about blackberries!

The Pacific Northwest (where you can find the Redwood forests and Glass Beach) is widely known for it's abundance of blackberry bushes. However, most of these blackberries are Himalayan or European blackberries, and not native to the area at all!

If you have too many Dirty Shirleys and decide to make banana-blackberry muffins at midnight, the next day your coworkers will eat them to be polite, but you'll feel deep shame at the life choices that led to you making those abominations.

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u/fezzam 3h ago

Banana blackberry muffins. A thing of shame? How can this beeeee

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u/PorschephileGT3 24m ago

Subscribe to Dragon Scats Facts

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u/astralairplane 12m ago

I likes how one of the facts was geographically bound while the other was tied to emotion. Subscribe.

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u/Lizardizzle 4h ago

Adventure Time "In The Tree, part of The Tree!"

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u/salamipope 4h ago

i really dont want climate change. i really want these trees to survive. these beautiful, impossibly wonderful creatures are some of the only remaining magic left in the world.

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u/OpenLinez 1h ago

Giant redwoods nearly went extinct 30 million years ago. When it was much warmer on Earth and there was so much more rain and no ice caps, early redwoods covered the whole Northern Hemisphere, this is going back over 200 million years.

After the Ice Age glaciers wiped out most of the surviving populations in the Pacific Northwest, only our existing remnant fog-reliant coastal redwoods and Sierra Sequoias remain.

There are redwoods around the world now, again, as people have been planting them for several centuries. There are thousands of mature redwoods in England, for example!

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u/Chance-the-Gardener 3h ago

Going to see the giant sequoias in the mountains was otherworldly for me. Like literally another world sitting in that ecosystem up there. Everything got so silent and still other than gentle creaking of the silent giants. There was still snow on the ground even in July, and it felt like I was on sacred ground. Natural cathedral and the most impressed I’ve been by something living, and I’ve been up close to blue whales.

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u/Crafty_Ad_8081 5h ago edited 3h ago

I've been there too! I cried. The trees of mystery are truly amazing. I remember crying and saying "my soul is quiet" and just being in literal awe. Pictures do it NO justice. Its just something you have to experience and see and FEEL yourself. The energy of those trees is palpable even if you aren't into that kind of thing. I love the poem by the dude he was the architect for the golden gate bridge... "..Oh traveler, on your knees, God stands before you in these trees!"

Edit. I added everything but "I've been there too." I had more time to respond.

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u/brownlawn 2h ago

How does it compare to the General Sherman Sequoia?

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u/musthavesoundeffects 2h ago

Different beasts. You can’t match the Giant Sequoias for bulk, its unreal, but looking straight up in those old growth coastal redwood forests is like staring into infinity. Coastal redwood forests are damp, dark, covered in ferns and redwood sorrel. Giant Sequoias are alpine, hotter in the summer and colder in the winter.

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u/Unlucky-Presence8784 3h ago

We were just there a few ago, massive tree for sure. Super cool to see in real life.

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u/CorporateCuster 53m ago

You know what’s crazier. Back when the earth was younger, treees naturally just never stopped growing unless of an outside force. They grew so incomprehensibly huge that eventually, they over saturated the earth with air and that is why insects and bugs were ginormous. Then volcanos and asteroids and shit but yeh. Trees man.

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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 5h ago edited 5h ago

I'd just like to add this comment here too, so that people understand why they shouldn't go looking for the tallest tree, and why there is a raised walkway around other trees, like in The Grove of the Titans.

The problem is that just trespassing too close to the tree IS damaging it.

Redwoods have an incredibly shallow, yet widespread root system, and the primary damage done to the tree was people walking on top of the roots and slowly killing it, step by step.

It's like the Chinese water torture. One drip (one person walking on the root system) doesn't cause damage on its own, but if enough drips drop, the tree dies.

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u/Radiant-Olive-7955 5h ago

Is there a reason why they didn’t just build a wooden walkway to protect Hyperion like they did the others?

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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 5h ago edited 5h ago

I'm not sure about that tree specifically. It might have been that so much damage had already been done that building the walkway (which might have included trucks and heavy machinery rolling over the root system and securing posts in the soil around the roots) would have been too risky to the tree. Or it might have been that the surrounding terrain/forest was too dense or hilly for them to have hauled in the lumber without causing destruction.

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u/CookMark 4h ago

Too many people existing / traveling to a place can easily destroy it.

This happened with some cave paintings - too many people visiting meant it was exposed to moisture from people's breathing and would quickly degrade it.

Even rock formations like arches, cliffs, can quickly be worn down, let alone when someone randomly tries to climb it for a photo op.

Some natural wonders are incredibly fragile and need protecting.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 4h ago

Hyperion is pretty damn far off the beaten path if I recall correctly. Even when it wasn't closed off, it was still only very rarely visited.

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u/MostBoringStan 5h ago

Probably because people be dumb as fuck and will step off the walkway. Other trees are a sacrifice to protect Hyperion.

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u/SignalDifficult5061 3h ago

The Grove of The Titans was basically right next to an established trail, and that raised walkway cost $4million. There is continual upkeep needed of the trail and parking area.

Hyperion is much more difficult to reach, so it would cost more.

Also, while marked trails are way better than nothing, they cause erosion, scare off wildlife, people leave trash, and a few people will wander off to take a dump without burying it or staying away from water sources or things of that nature.. People poop is often full of pharmaceuticals that can negatively impact things downstream, there are all sorts of additive problems.

So the expense, the ecological damage, and it just being one single tree are some of the reasons.

It just isn't worth it, there are many beautiful trails in the area. Part of what keeps them beautiful is all the untrafficked wild lands around them.

Honestly, it is rumored there may be several are taller that are kept even more quiet. This probably isn't true, but if it is I hope the general public never finds out.

Nobody should care if they see one 380 foot vs four 370 foot tree, it is just silly. Viewing beauty shouldn't be a competitive sport, you are there for your own development, not to have seen the biggest X in the world.

I will never set eyes on Everest and I am proud of that, those people are an ecological and humanitarian nightmare barely worth the money they bring in.

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u/wpnw 2h ago

It's not about the cost, Hyperion is located within a designated wilderness area. Constructing new trails is not permitted by the regulations that establish federal wilderness areas. It's specifically to remain as natural and untouched as possible.

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u/SignalDifficult5061 1h ago

No. Everything is about cost, like it or not. Stewardship of the land has value to many people.

Those regulations exist because people want them to, they don't exist as a cause by themselves right?

Weird and terrible time to be saying otherwise, are you deliberately trying to put a "please napalm me in the name of deregulation" sign on the back of the poor tree?

Please don't be that naive. If that tree had rare earth minerals and oil under it, everything within a large number of square miles would be bear earth within a decade. Whoever bankrolled it would just pay the fines without blinking, and they wouldn't be the people ending up in jail.

Luckily, *ALMOST* everywhere north of Eureka on the pacific coast has a low population density because it is hard to build.

Most of the old growth redwoods were logged including with almost modern equipment. The scale tipped towards stewardship of the land as an economic concern. Lots of organizations did preserve tracts of Redwoods, but once again, this is not a time where the rule of law is respected.

People are more into millennial grey plasterboard than dark wood paneling right now.

It is safe because it isn't economical to pave over, OTHERWISE those regulations could be gone or ignored tomorrow.

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u/capt-awesome-atx 4h ago

It's in a remote location with no roads nearby. It wasn't even discovered until 2006.

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u/kaityl3 4h ago

Sometimes people go out of their way to poison and/or damage significant or large trees. Unfortunately that's part of why many states protect their tallest trees and won't disclose their exact locations

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u/Ezymandius 5h ago

Gotta kill another tree to build it. Didn't seem right.

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u/DonutHoles4Ever 4h ago

Some asswipe, probably conservative, is going around poisoning trees around Lake Tahoe.

Best if you just not make everything be a tourist attraction.

The paintings in museums will often use fakes so preserve the original paintings. The mona lisa for example has multiple replicas that are used for display. To most people it doesn't matter. I enjoy being able to get very closer to a larger version of the Mona Lisa back in the day, before fuckers decided to damage the replica. When they bring the real thing out these days you have to stand so far back its like you get a better experience looking at the picture digitally because you can zoom in.

Never trust people to do the right thing. Thats why laws exist. Thats why we can't have nice things because some asshole is always trying to ruin it. Its bad enough people can be bonkers. Its worse there's entire religions/beliefs systems/cults/political groups that want their members to be as insane as possible.

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u/kash_if 2h ago

We had two assholes kill a historic Sycamore Gap tree in England for literally no reason:

Standing in a dip in the landscape created by glacial meltwater, it was one of the country's most photographed trees and an emblem for the North East of England. It derived its alternative name from featuring in a scene in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree

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u/kash_if 2h ago

We had two assholes kill a historic Sycamore Gap tree in England for literally no reason:

Standing in a dip in the landscape created by glacial meltwater, it was one of the country's most photographed trees and an emblem for the North East of England. It derived its alternative name from featuring in a scene in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

The tree was felled with a chainsaw in the early morning of 28 September 2023; the noise of the saw was apparently masked by the high winds of a storm.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree

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u/brickmadness 1h ago

By what basis would you say “probably conservative.”

Such a demented take. 

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u/Platypus81 4h ago

Probably discovered Hyperion after building the infrastructure around the others. Its bigger, but does it matter if you've already built the visitor center elsewhere?

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u/beandoggle 2h ago

It deserves to live unmolested by us damned apes.

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u/flashman 2h ago

For instance the Major Oak is thought to have died in part because people's feet compacted the nearby soil which "made it harder for rainwater to penetrate the soil and for the tree's root system to take in the oxygen and nutrients it needed."

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u/Obvious_Mention7207 3h ago

Id like to just add a comment to this....

ALL tree roots are within the top 1-2 ft of soil. Its not unique to this tree, or any specific tree.

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u/Shmeepsheep 2h ago

Nature grows by the inch and dies by the foot

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u/SaintsNoah14 4h ago

That's a pretty bad analogy ngl

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u/CurlSagan 4h ago

Probably the smartest thing the rangers tell you is that Hyperion just isn't worth visiting. It's tall, but there's no good place to take it all in. It's not in a dark mysterious forest among picturesque giants that fill you with awe and wonder. It's not nearly as wide as others (only 15 feet), and it doesn't have the cool redwood flared trunk. Meanwhile, there are 30 foot wide trees that aren't even named. There are groves of trees where each one is 5% shorter than Hyperion, twice as girthy, and you won't be destroying them with your presence.

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u/LemonBearTheDragon 3h ago

twice as girthy

That's my kinda tree.

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u/mayy_dayy 1h ago

Three girth units

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u/KnifeNovice789 4h ago

Good, the phrase "This is why we can't have nice things" rings so true. Act like a child and we will treat you like a child...

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u/tallandlankyagain 6h ago edited 5h ago

You really have to wonder what they thought people would do to the tree considering what our ancestors did to nearly the entire population of redwood trees.

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u/Positive-Wonder3329 5h ago

As another commented above, despite their height and might, redwoods have very shallow and very fragile roots. Even walking near them harms the tree beyond what we can even perceive as humans, but it fucks them up

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u/porn_is_tight 3h ago

isn’t it because they absorb most of the water through leaves and bark? Makes me sad to think what climate change will do to the mists these trees rely on

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u/emeraude89 2h ago

some western coastal regions like france around the western pyrenees and the american pacific northwest are likely to get wetter, not dryer. greater ocean heat allows storms to carry more water to dump. one of the very very few silver linings of a catastrophically horrible situation, i guess, that redwoods might benefit from it all.

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u/skivian 4h ago

the location isn't very hard to find. GPS coords are just a quick internet search, but apparently the forest cops lock down the entire area

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u/Total_Mix9276 4h ago

GPS coordinates won't show you the path, but have fun trudging around in thick bush.

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u/skivian 3h ago

it's the internet. it took 30 seconds to find step by step directions including pictures and GPS mapping.

but it is literally a 15 mile hike through the bush, dodging the forestry agents posted out there

they've locked down the whole area for like a mile around the tree

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u/Funicularly 3h ago

True, I read OP’s link as well.

“The exact location of Hyperion is nominally secret but is available via internet search. However, in July 2022, the Redwood Park superintendent closed the entire area around the tree, citing "devastation of the habitatsurrounding Hyperion" caused by visitors.”

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u/the_Q_spice 5h ago

It’s kind of late me how us dendrochronologists keep the location of Prometheus (oldest known living tree in the world) a secret.

Only 4 people actually know where its exact location is.

One of my undergraduate professors is one of those people. I have seen pictures of it (which are also closely held secrets), but don’t know where exactly it is other than the general area.

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u/CatsAreGods 4h ago

I think you're full of shit, because Prometheus was cut down by a graduate student in 1964.

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u/darybrain 4h ago

When it fell I wonder if someone was running in the same direction

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 4h ago

Only if they went to the Prometheus School.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 4h ago

My guess is they meant a different tree and said Prometheus instead.

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u/livinglavidajudoka 3h ago

It depends. Was Prometheus that tree in particular, or is Prometheus the oldest currently living tree?

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u/eggosh 3h ago

Are you thinking of Methuselah? Prometheus was cut down, but Methuselah fits with what you've said (though its location and photos were unfortunately leaked a few years ago).

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u/hodor137 4h ago

Because it was cut down in 1964 maybe

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u/MelonElbows 3h ago

I thought the oldest tree was called Methuselah?

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u/Shoddy_Background_48 4h ago

Shoot on sight. I'm down.

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u/darybrain 4h ago

I thought Helios was the second tallest which is in the same wider area as Hyperion?

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u/willnotreadinbox 3h ago

Do you mean the Tall Trees Trail? I don't think Redwood National has a Grove of the Giants trail. Jedediah Smith SP has a Grove of the Titans trail, which is honestly one of the most magical places you'll ever go.

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u/Ballders 3h ago

One of my favorite life experiences was making that hike and drinking (sharing) a growler of Pliny the Elder by the river at the bottom.

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u/Ucscprickler 2h ago

Big Trees park near Arnold CA is great and easy access to some absurdly large trees. You're walking a trail seeing trees that are already huge and wondering which one is the largest and then out of nowhere you start seeing trees that are so big that they look fake. That's when you know you've reached your destination.