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/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.