The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Sequoia

SEQUOIA, a genus of Coniferæ, included in the sub-family Taxodioidæ, of which the other genus is the Taxodium or deciduous cypress. The Sequoia genus (named in honor of the Cherokee chief Sequo-yah, who invented the alphabet of that tribe), was for a time known as Taxodium or Wellingtonia; it comprised two species, S. sempervirens, the redwood, and S. gigantea, the “big-tree,” both natives of California. The genus was once widely distributed, as fossil remains testify, and the petrified forest in Arizona is stated to be composed of species of sequoia. The flowers of the sequoias are monœcious and are borne in scaly inflorescences as terminal or axillary shoots in such great profusion, that the pollen covers the ground beneath the trees during their winter blooming. The pistillate flowers mature into a fruit, or oval cone, having persistent woody scales, broadened at their outside ends into a rhomboidal flat top, very much wrinkled, and with a slightly prickle-tipped apex. Their scales are slightly separated to allow the many brown, compressed seeds to escape and then spin away on their lateral wings. The leaves are acute, compressed and keeled, decurrent on the stem, alternate and inserted in spirals, very scale-like on the branchlets, but on older branches linear and spreading.

The redwood, which was the first Sequoia discovered, is the more common species, and grows along the Pacific Coast just so far inland as the sea-fogs can go. It is a very straight, handsome tree, with columnar trunk, and spreading branches and branchlets, and reaches in some instances as great a height as the other and more famous species. See Redwood.