Really Tall Trees Chris Coyier

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November 7, 2023

Redwoods, right? Coastal redwoods are the big boys! Super big.

But wait, don’t people also say sequoias as in Giant Sequoias? Super big. Wait are they the same thing? Yes right?

No.

My kid loves NATURE BOOM TIME, and we both learned that these are totally different kinds of trees that never grow by each other.

  • Coastal redwood — tallest, but relatively skinny.
  • Giant Sequoias — more impressively girthy, but not as tall as redwood.

You can go visit the largest tree on Earth, General Sherman. But by “largest” it is meant “by volume” which is maybe a weird way to measure a tree but OK.

The tallest tree on Earth also happens to be in California and is called Hyperion. But it’s location is kinda secret and visiting it is highly discouraged. The parks resource manager Leonel Arguello kinda dumps on it:

“It’s the most unimpressive tree you’ll ever see,” he said. “I’ve worked at this park for 33 years now, I’ve seen most of the old growth in this park, and this particular tree is not that impressive at the base. It’s just really tall.”

He added: “When you can’t see the top 150 feet of tree, it doesn’t really matter how tall it is.”

But he’s pretty incentivized to get you to not come see it, not that I was planning to.

¹ Not to be confused with the super weird and cool banjo player TALL TALL TREES.

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