{"id":891,"date":"2016-12-30T00:47:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T00:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/?p=891"},"modified":"2018-08-13T05:29:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T05:29:08","slug":"naming-redwoods-vs-not-naming-redwoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/2016\/12\/30\/naming-redwoods-vs-not-naming-redwoods\/","title":{"rendered":"Naming Redwoods vs. Not Naming Redwoods"},"content":{"rendered":"

In years gone by many giant tree discoveries have been named and publicized including a bunch of coast redwoods and giant sequoias. Almost everybody I ever met was comfortable\u00a0with that tradition, until about six years ago. A\u00a0contrary philosophy \u00a0emerged from some researchers and rangers, who \u00a0think it’s better to not<\/strong> give names to redwoods. They \u00a0feel that way after National Geographic and Richard Preston publicized some coast redwood discoveries. Afterward some people started “getting on their case” when locations were not released at park visitor centers. And eventually a few locations leaked on social media, followed by\u00a0 wear and tear around certain coast redwoods. This led to more more complications for decision-making. Therein lies\u00a0the origin of what\u00a0prompted their change of heart.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below image …<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Gizmo<\/a>

Gizmo – Coast Redwood<\/p><\/div>\n

Their wishes have good intentions, but experience and facts prove their new way of thinking may be\u00a0futile. And one example can\u00a0explain why. Before the name for\u00a0Chesty Puller coast redwood<\/a>\u00a0was established online, various people started\u00a0calling it The Fused Titan<\/strong> instead. \u00a0That proves if we don’t name a redwood, others will do it anyway. If you don’t want \u00a0a redwood to become a celebrity, names don’t matter. The only option may\u00a0be concealing a discovery’s existence altogether. Furthermore, \u00a0any research reports connected to noteworthy redwoods would have to be hidden entirely because seekers still compile those kind of\u00a0 information fragments and formulated an identity. Suppose Hyperion had not been named in 2006, but simply published as the tallest redwood. The result would simply be a celebrity name “The World’s Tallest Tree” … boring name, but it’s still a name.<\/p>\n

My approach is somewhere between. I name practically every coast redwood discovery to keep track of them. I publish a few names\u00a0… but not all. We found that the real problem to vegetation was publishing the park where the superlatives grow if the location is basically unknown to the general populace.<\/p>\n

This reminds of something different but related in several ways … \u00a0the species-naming history of Coast Redwood and Giant Sequoia. Long ago, the coast redwoods<\/strong> \u00a0were discovered and named Sequoia sempervirens. Then in the 1850’s, the giant sequoias<\/strong> (found amidst the California Gold Rush) were documented by the scientific community. Although others had spotted giant sequoia before, what set things in motion was a hunter Augustus Dowd<\/strong>, reporting his find near \u00a0present-day Calaveras Big Trees State Park, in 1852.<\/p>\n

The next\u00a0summer, he sent foliage and cones to Albert Kellogg<\/strong>, \u00a0physician &\u00a0amateur botanist \u00a0in San Francisco. Kellogg had everything \u00a0needed to name the new species. But Kellogg delayed and triggered \u00a0events that fueled\u00a0scientific and diplomatic arguments for years to follow.<\/p>\n

Kellogg distributed\u00a0the Big Tree knowledge\u00a0openly, and \u00a0it was intercepted\u00a0by an Englishman, William Lobb, who was visiting\u00a0California collecting plants for an English nursery. Lobb returned\u00a0to England, arriving December 1853, with the big tree’s\u00a0foliage, cones and seedlings.\u00a0Lobb shared these\u00a0with John Lindley, a foremost botanist in England.<\/p>\n

Lindley, recognized the importance of \u00a0the large trees, then\u00a0wrote a formal botanical description, then \u00a0published it December 24, 1853. Thinking\u00a0the new discovery\u00a0had no near relatives, he assigned \u00a0a new genus \u2013 Wellingtonia<\/strong>. Word reached the United States that an\u00a0Englishman \u00a0formally named the huge new (American) species\u00a0after the British general who \u00a0defeated Napoleon. Americans were\u00a0furious about this.\u00a0English defended Wellingtonia while \u00a0American counterparts \u00a0argued for \u00a0alternatives, including Washingtonia.<\/p>\n

Eventually, a Frenchman, Joseph Decaisne suggested \u00a0a solution that the new giant trees are\u00a0so closely related to already named redwoods \u00a0along California coast, that they should be in the same genus<\/strong>. Since 1847, the coast redwoods were\u00a0called Sequoia sempervirens<\/strong>, a name applied by Austrian botanist Stephen Endlicher. Following Decaisne’s suggestion, the big trees\u00a0of the Sierra became Sequoia gigantea<\/strong>.\u00a0The name was\u00a0used scientifically until 1939. Today, scientists call them Sequoiadendron giganteum<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The problem we see today with common names stemmed from a tree not getting a name from one person, then\u00a0others\u00a0giving it a name anyway.<\/p>\n

This is why coast redwood is the only “Sequoia” and Sequoiadendron of the Sierra Nevada is nicknamed “giant sequoia”. The common name was probably coined because a lot of people probably had no idea at the time that coast redwoods remained in those forests immensely larger than any giant sequoia seen standing today. In those days, “giant sequoia” would have been fitting for coast redwood’s common name too.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0closing note: the\u00a0name sequoia<\/em>, is assumed by many to commemorate a\u00a0famous Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah. But apparently, there isn’t a shred of evidence to substantiate any part of this.<\/p>\n

Endlicher never documented the\u00a0name sequoia<\/em>. No\u00a0connection between Endlicher and Sequoyah has been found. – no proof \u00a0that he \u201cnamed the big red trees for a famous red man,\u201d<\/em> as described years ago. The entire Cherokee Indian name seems to boil down to the arena of campfire stories that people accept on blind faith.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In years gone by many giant tree discoveries have been named and publicized including a bunch of coast redwoods and giant sequoias. Almost everybody I ever met was comfortable\u00a0with that tradition, until about six years ago. A\u00a0contrary philosophy \u00a0emerged from some researchers and rangers, who \u00a0think it’s better to not give names to redwoods. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1086,"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions\/1086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdvaden.com\/photoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}