favor natural reproduction it will be resorted to eventually if
any particular attempt is made to get this species. Leaving large
seed trees is not only expensive, but rather uncertain, because
heavy seed years are several years apart and squirrels consume a
large portion of an ordinary crop. Transplants which have received
nursery shelter until past the greatest danger of drying out should
prove most successful on heavily-cut south slopes.

REDWOOD (_Sequoia sempervirens_)

Although probably the most rapid-growing of all American commercial
trees and also of high market standing, redwood has been little
studied by foresters. The layman is still more confused by its many
peculiarities. Growing to a size of 20 feet in diameter and 350 feet
high, reaching an age of well over 1,000 years and seldom reproducing
by means of seed, it is not surprising that it was long regarded
as ill-adapted to second crop management. Although observing that
suckers sprout from the stumps with great rapidity, the lumberman
generally regarded these mushroom growths as abnormal and temporary,
and believed his virgin timber to be the finally-vanishing remnant
of a prehistoric species unsuited to present-day conditions.

It was next discovered that the suckering habit is no new one,
indeed that the majority of the present stand, however old, began
as sprouts from roots or stumps of its predecessors. This is evident
from the circular arrangement of several trees around the spot where
their parent stood. These old sprouts were of very slow growth,
for they were shaded by a forest of extreme density. As seedlings
they could have neither germinated nor grown, but as suckers they
were kept alive by the parent until light supply became available