The Coast Redwood of Fota

In its native range along the California and Oregon coast, Sequoia sempervirens is the tallest tree species on earth, and specimens there run past a hundred metres and two thousand years old. Fota's, banded by the national heritage tree survey to 150 to 200 years, is a child by comparison, planted not long after the species reached European gardens through Victorian plant collecting in the 1840s and 50s. The species does well in Ireland's wet, mild climate for the same reason it does well on the fog-soaked Pacific coast: a coast redwood pulls a large share of its water straight out of humid air through its needles rather than relying on roots alone, which is part of why it can grow so fast and so tall. Fota's frost-free microclimate, the one the Smith-Barry family built their whole collection around from the 1820s, is generous even by Irish standards, and this tree has had a century and a half of it. The register is the only source describing this specimen, distinct from University College Cork's own pair of giant sequoias in the city. If you know when it went in, tell us.