Photo: Eric Kilby from Somerville, MA, USA (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Roughly 2,200 to 3,200 years old.
Oldest trees in California
The oldest tree we map in California is General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park, at roughly 2,300 to 2,700 years. We map 26 trees across 8 places in California, each one researched and verified.
California holds the biggest living things on earth and some of its most photographed trees, and they are rarely the same trees. The giant sequoias stand in the Sierra, where General Sherman was wrapped in foil in 2021 while the fire burned toward it. The coast redwoods stand in fog along the Russian River, a short walk from a car park at Armstrong Woods. Palo Alto is named for a single redwood that still stands beside the railway. The cities have their own kind of old tree: Moreton Bay figs planted by Victorian gardeners across Los Angeles and San Diego, Monterey cypresses bent by the wind at Point Lobos, and a numbered Landmark Tree list in San Francisco that protects a cork oak on 20th Street.
Every place we map in California
1
Los Angeles8 trees2
San Francisco6 trees3
San Diego4 trees4
Monterey3 trees5
Guerneville2 trees6Lebec1 tree7Palo Alto1 tree8Sequoia National Park1 tree
Los Angeles8 trees2San Francisco6 trees3San Diego4 trees4Monterey3 trees5Guerneville2 trees6Lebec1 tree7Palo Alto1 tree8Sequoia National Park1 tree15 species grow in California
Oaks Coast Live Oak 1 · Cork Oak 1 · Valley Oak 1
Figs and mulberries Moreton Bay Fig 7
Conifers Coast Redwood 4 · Monterey Cypress 3 · Giant Sequoia 1 · Guadalupe Island Cypress 1 · Kauri 1 · Queensland Kauri 1
Palms California Fan Palm 1 · Canary Island Date Palm 1
Southern hemisphere Tipu Tree 1
More broadleaf trees Bay Laurel 1 · Flowering Ash 1
The 10 oldest trees we map in California
Photo: Sergei Mutovkin (CC BY 2.0)
Roughly 1,200 to 1,600 years old.
Roughly 1,100 to 1,500 years old.
Roughly 1,000 to 1,100 years old.
Photo: Ilya Grigorik (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Roughly 200 to 300 years old.
Roughly 200 to 250 years old.
About 200 years old.
Photo: Clyde Charles Brown (CC BY-SA 4.0)
About 170 years old.
Photo: Jengod (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Roughly 145 to 155 years old.
Roughly 145 to 155 years old.
Trees from California also appear in The Trees the World Has Written About · The Tallest Trees We Have Measured · The Oldest Tree in Every City We Map. See every place we map in the United States, or open the map to find what is near you.