Redwood Tree, California

Redwood Tree, California

Partway up a 350-foot tree, botanist Marie Antoine (at right) passes a slender core sample of its wood—750 years of redwood biography—to canopy ecologist Giacomo Renzullo. Research now shows that the older such trees get, the more wood they put on.

The California trees people call "redwoods" are actually two distinct species, both of them best described in superlatives.

Sometimes called simply the "big trees," giant sequoias (sequoiadendron giganteum) grow only in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains toward the state's eastern border. The most massive living things, they can reach 280 feet tall and 23 feet across. The largest rise a little over 300 feet and spread almost 30 feet across. The oldest have been around over 3,000 years.

Coastal redwoods (sequoia sempervirens) are the tallest living things on on our planet, growing 300-350 feet tall and 16-18 feet across, with record specimens soaring 360 feet. They are the primary tree in the redwood forests that grow from near the California coast from the northern border down to Big Sur.

Redwood forests are so plentiful in California that you'll find almost a dozen parks with "redwood" in their name, along with a national park and quite a few regional ones. Any of them will give you a glimpse of the magnificent trees and the forests they grow in, but we think the redwood forests listed below are some of the best places to see them. They're listed in geographic order from north to south.