Friday, January 27, 2012

Navarro River Redwoods and Grand Fir?

(Massive redwood stump, Navarro River)
I stopped by a redwood grove along the Navarro River again after I finished my job in Pt. Arena. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day on the coast. Thanks to the Save the Redwoods League, portions of redwood forest have been saved hopefully for future generations. I started my exploration by taking a picture of a massive stump of a redwood that had been logged. However, I didn't want to focus on that today.
(Burly redwood giant, Navarro River)
This is going to a rockstar redwood grove in 500 years or so. The habitat is perfect. As long as we can preserve it, educate our youth, and show some self restraint, the redwoods along the Navarro River will once again be epic. I did manage to find one fairly large redwood mutant, pretty close to the river. Actually many of the redwoods here looked like mutants, with all sorts of strange branches, burls and reiterated trunks sprouting from the main trunk.
(Grand firs? above)
 Eventually I walked towards two monster trees that clearly were not redwoods. I searched all around the bases to look for cones. I found one odd shaped cone, and also collected several small, dead branches.
(Grand firs? above)
The needles looked very similar to redwoods and Douglas firs. After looking through my California conifer book, I was led to believe that these two trees might be Grand Firs. On one hand, I'm finding that figuring out the different conifers is easier than I expected, but on the other hand more difficult. They all look so different depending on their age, and as soon as I think I've got one figured out, I notice something that makes me think it's something different.
(Standing between two enormous Grand Firs? Navarro River)

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