Drury Redwood .. 2nd, 3rd or 4th? .. was #12

by Mario Vaden

 

The Drury redwood is located in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. For referenc, 2009 data for the Drury coast redwood was 275 feet high .. 19.2 feet diameter dbh .. 29,774 cu. ft.

That gave Drury redwood the reputation for 12th largest redwood up until 2009. But some new info and measurements imply the Drury has potential for 2nd, 3rd or 4th largest ... at least until the new 2014 - 2016 discoveries. With some imagination, Drury redwood's trunk can resemble a half skull or mask. No directions are listed here but let me off that the name relates to where it stands.

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The remains of "healed-over" felling cuts are evident on the upslope side. Gerald Beranek an expert on coast redwood logging says the marks are the remains of a very old hand-chopped undercut (last time I checked several of Beranek's redwood books were available at the Humboldt Redwoods visitor center, farther south).

This is a fused trunk coast redwood that probably merged prior to 800 B.C.. Wnen the great Maya civilization was headed for decline, this youthful Drury redwood was just beginning to grow.

 

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Back around 2010, Michael Taylor listed the diameter as 20.8' dbh & 30,103 cu. ft. based on older measurements. But Taylor later re-measured extensively with 10,000 data points. He commented that the trunk holds a diameter of 18 ft. at twenty feet up from the ground, making it the widest known redwood at that height (2011). According to Michael, the Drury is still 16 ft. diameter at 100 ft., which should exceed even General Sherman giant sequoia at that point. He suggested at least 35,000 cu. ft., but didn't publish a final calculation at his site. It's worth adding that when someone (anonymously) started leaking locations around 2011, Taylor's enthusiasm for detailed updates diminished. He removed his site landmarktrees.net permanently.

But borrowing what Taylor had shared, a conical frustum calculation denotes around 27,800 cu. ft. for just the first 100 ft. of trunk. So the Drury may be in the league of El Viejo del Norte or larger than Howland Hill Giant. Drury Giant may have been the 2nd, 3rd or 4th largest known coast redwood before the new discoveries of 2014 occured. One other (J. M.) mentioned they measured Drury once and arrived with around 30,000 cu. ft., but that sounds like a "fast & dirty" preliminary estimate, because the diameters Taylor noted in the first 100 ft. put Drury close to 30,000 cu. ft. not even counting the entire upper half. For the moment, Taylor's interjection of notes suggest the Drury has potential 36,000 - 38,000 cu. ft. I find the information intriguing. And the trunk has almost no taper.

The first image above shows Kiera of Crescent City for scale, taken around 2012. The second image image below taken from more distance and different angle shows the Drury giant is monumental and has minimal taper. No other pre-2014 coast redwood discovery lower trunk looks like this, but after 2014 something was found in "Brünnhilde Gulch" sharing resemblance to Drury redwood's lower trunk on a more gargantual scale.

The third image at the bottom shows the grove in autumn with Drury redwood in the background. It's a beautiful spot.