Few people probably realize how great the height difference is between west coast tree species and other species to the east.

Hopefully  tree enthusiasts across the country don’t take this the wrong way, because I don’t consider trees in the eastern 3/4  of the USA as  tall. Some are tall for their species, but not superlatively tall. If we draw a line down the map from Idaho to Arizona, there is hardly anything east of that line throughout the USA that is even 200 ft. tall. For example, there is a Boogerman Eastern White Pine in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that was 207 ft. tall, but a storm reduced it to 187 ft.. There’s an Eastern White Pine in South Carolina, about 170 ft. tall. And Tuliptree in North Carolina is known to reach about 177 ft. tall.

That does not mean I don’t enjoy trees east of us. I find some spectacular in their own way, including short ones like the Bristlecone Pine which are amazing for age and form.

But when we focus on height potential, I find the difference between the west coast states and the rest to the east, to be amazing. Whereas all that land to the east has just a handful of species approaching the 180 ft. to 200 ft. range, the west coast has several species over 300 ft., with coast redwood not far from 400 ft. tall. Here’s a few of the tallest:

 

Coast Redwood, Redwood National and State Parks ~ 379 ft.

Douglas Fir, Coos County, Oregon ~ 327 ft. 

Sitka Spruce, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park ~ 317 ft.

Giant Sequoia, Sequoia National Park, CA ~ 314 ft.

Noble Fir, Mount Saint Helens Volcanic Monument, WA ~ 295 ft.

Western Hemlock, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, CA ~ 273 ft.

Ponderosa Pine, Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest ~ 268 ft.

Grand Fir, Glacier Peak Wilderness, WA ~ 267 ft.

Port Orford Cedar, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, CA ~ 266 ft.

Sugar Pine, Yosemite National Park, CA ~ 264 ft.

 

Aside from the west coast’s known height records, there are literally thousands of trees on thousands of acres  that reach or breach 200 ft.

Maybe in the same way 10 ft. to 28 ft. diameter west coast species make anything in the east USA seem puny … the soaring heights of west coast trees simply dwarf virtually everything to the east in the entire USA.

So if you really want to see some tall trees, look to the forests of the west coast.

PS …

I find it interesting that tree hunters from the east often refer to trees there … their “monsters” … by  circumference, rather than diameter. Maybe its because 13.8′ sounds bigger than 4.3′ when writing circumference with the larger number.

Man … out here on the west coast, there are trees with branches bigger than that. Some west coast trees have limbs larger than 5 feet diameter .. that’s branches thicker than some “monster” tree trunks of the east.

Image: shows wind-shaped lichen-coated top of one of the west coast’s tallest Douglas Fir.