sequoia (genus)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Sequoia'' is a
genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...
of
redwood Sequoioideae, popularly known as redwoods, is a subfamily of coniferous trees within the family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affini ...
coniferous tree Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All extant ...
s in the subfamily
Sequoioideae Sequoioideae, popularly known as redwoods, is a subfamily of coniferous trees within the family Cupressaceae. It includes the largest and tallest trees in the world. Description The three redwood subfamily genera are '' Sequoia'' from coast ...
of the family
Cupressaceae Cupressaceae is a conifer family, the cypress family, with worldwide distribution. The family includes 27–30 genera (17 monotypic), which include the junipers and redwoods, with about 130–140 species in total. They are monoecious, subdio ...
. The only
extant species Neontology is a part of biology that, in contrast to paleontology, deals with living (or, more generally, ''recent'') organisms. It is the study of extant taxa (singular: extant taxon): taxa (such as species, genera and families) with members st ...
of the genus is ''
Sequoia sempervirens ''Sequoia sempervirens'' ()''Sunset Western Garden Book,'' 1995:606–607 is the sole living species of the genus '' Sequoia'' in the cypress family Cupressaceae (formerly treated in Taxodiaceae). Common names include coast redwood, coastal ...
'' in the Northern California coastal forests ecoregion of
Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...
and Southwestern Oregon in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.Kew World Checklist of Selected Plant Families
/ref> The two other genera in the subfamily Sequoioideae, ''
Sequoiadendron ''Sequoiadendron'' is a genus of evergreen trees, with two species, only one of which survives to the present: * ''Sequoiadendron giganteum'', extant, commonly known as wellingtonia, giant redwood and giant sequoia, growing naturally in the Sie ...
'' and ''
Metasequoia ''Metasequoia'', or dawn redwoods, is a genus of fast-growing deciduous trees, one of three species of pinophyta, conifers known as redwoods. The living species ''Metasequoia glyptostroboides'' is native to Lichuan, Hubei, Lichuan county in Hube ...
'', are closely related to ''Sequoia''. It includes the tallest trees, as well as the heaviest, in the world. Several
extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
have been named from
fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s, including '' Sequoia affinis ''(Western North America), '' Sequoia chinensis'' (no valid reference, identification uncertain) of
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, ''
Sequoia langsdorfii Sequoia, Sequoya or Sequoyah may refer to: Science and technology Biology * Sequoioideae, a three-genus subfamily of the cypress family ** ''Sequoia'' (genus), a genus with one living and several fossil species *** ''Sequoia sempervirens'', coa ...
'' (reclassified as Metasequoia), '' Sequoia dakotensis'' (reclassified as Metasequoia) of
South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...
(
Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval from ...
), and '' Sequoia magnifica'' (
petrified wood Petrified wood, also known as petrified tree (from Ancient Greek meaning 'rock' or 'stone'; literally 'wood turned into stone'), is the name given to a special type of ''fossilized wood'', the fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation. ''P ...
from the Yellowstone National Park area).


Etymology

The name ''Sequoia'' was first published as a genus name by the Austrian botanist
Stephan Endlicher Stephan Ladislaus Endlicher also known as Endlicher István László (24 June 1804, Bratislava (Pozsony) – 28 March 1849, Vienna) was an Austrian botanist, numismatist and Sinologist. He was a director of the Botanical Garden of Vienna. Bio ...
in 1847. However, he left no specific reasons for choosing that name, and there is no record of anyone else speaking to him about its origin. The most common modern guess is that Endlicher, a published linguist, sinologist, philologist, as well as a systematic botanist, named the genus in honor of
Sequoyah Sequoyah (Cherokee language, Cherokee: ᏍᏏᏉᏯ, ''Ssiquoya'', or ᏎᏉᏯ, ''Se-quo-ya''; 1770 – August 1843), also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American polymath of the Ch ...
, the inventor of the Cherokee writing system, now known as Sequoyan. Beginning in the 1860s, it was suggested that the name is instead a derivation from the Latin word for "sequence", since the species was thought to be a follower or remnant of massive ancient, extinct species, and thus the next in a sequence. However, in a 2012 article, author Gary Lowe argues that Endlicher would not have had the knowledge to conceive of ''Sequoia sempervirens'' as the successor to a fossil sequence, and that he more likely saw it, within the framework of his taxonomic arrangements, as completing a morphological sequence of species in regards to the number of seeds per cone scale. In 2017, Nancy Muleady-Mecham of Northern Arizona University, after extensive research with original documents in Austria, claimed to find a positive link to the person Sequoyah and Endlicher as well as information that the use of the Latin ''sequor'' would not have been correct, however there are debilitating limitations to the arguments presented in the 2017 article. The alleged positive link is based on a similarity in pronunciation of the words “Sequoyah” and “Sequoia”; valid to persons that think in English, but not those that think in German or Latin. Endlicher could not have known how Sequoyah’s name was pronounced in Cherokee since he never had the opportunity to hear spoken Cherokee. The claimed use of Latin ignores Endlicher’s philological background and familiarity with the Latin of the ancient manuscripts in the royal library on which he extensively published. Endlicher’s Botanical Latin prefix in the genus name Sequoia was derived from the Latin verb “sequor”, and was not a conjugation of the verb.


Paleontology

''Sequoia jeholensis'' is the oldest recorded member of the genus ''Sequoia'' (along with ''Sequoia portlandica'', but this name is a ''
nomen dubium In binomial nomenclature, a ''nomen dubium'' (Latin for "doubtful name", plural ''nomina dubia'') is a scientific name that is of unknown or doubtful application. Zoology In case of a ''nomen dubium'' it may be impossible to determine whether a s ...
''), known from the
Jiufotang Formation The Jiufotang Formation ( Chinese: 九佛堂组, pinyin: ''jiǔfótáng zǔ'') is an Early Cretaceous geological formation in Chaoyang, Liaoning which has yielded fossils of feathered dinosaurs, primitive birds, pterosaurs, and other organisms (see ...
(Lower Cretaceous) and the
Jiulongshan Formation The Haifanggou Formation (), also known as the Jiulongshan Formation (), is a fossil-bearing rock deposit located near Daohugou () village of Ningcheng County, in Inner Mongolia, northeastern China. The formation consists of coarse conglomerates ...
(Middle Jurassic) of China. By the late
Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...
the ancestral sequoias were established in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, parts of
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, and western
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
. Comparisons among fossils and modern organisms suggest that by this period ''Sequoia'' ancestors had already evolved a greater
tracheid A tracheid is a long and tapered lignified cell in the xylem of vascular plants. It is a type of conductive cell called a tracheary element. Angiosperms use another type of tracheary element, called vessel elements, to transport water through th ...
diameter that allowed it to reach the great heights characteristic of the modern ''
Sequoia sempervirens ''Sequoia sempervirens'' ()''Sunset Western Garden Book,'' 1995:606–607 is the sole living species of the genus '' Sequoia'' in the cypress family Cupressaceae (formerly treated in Taxodiaceae). Common names include coast redwood, coastal ...
'' (coast redwood) and ''
Sequoiadendron giganteum ''Sequoiadendron giganteum'' (giant sequoia; also known as giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, California big tree, Wellingtonia or simply big treea nickname also used by John Muir) is the sole living species in the genus ''Sequoiade ...
'' (giant sequoia). ''Sequoia'' ancestors were not dominant in the tropical high northern latitudes, like ''
Metasequoia ''Metasequoia'', or dawn redwoods, is a genus of fast-growing deciduous trees, one of three species of pinophyta, conifers known as redwoods. The living species ''Metasequoia glyptostroboides'' is native to Lichuan, Hubei, Lichuan county in Hube ...
'', a redwood whose
deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...
habit gave it a significant adaptive advantage in an environment with 3 months of continuous darkness. However, there still was possibly prolonged range overlap between ''Sequoia'' and ''Metasequoia'' which could have led to hybridization events that created the modern
hexaploid Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contains ...
''Sequoia sempervirens''. See also the metastudy of the geologic history of the giant sequoia and the coast redwood. A general cooling trend by the late
Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...
and
Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...
reduced the northern ranges of ancestral ''Sequoia''. By the end of the
Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...
and beginning of the
Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 Continued cooling in the Pliocene meant that ''Sequoia'', which is extremely intolerant to frost due to the high water content of its tissues, also became locally extinct in response to the extreme cooling of Europe and Asia In western North America it continued to move south through coastal
Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
and
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, surviving due to the abundant rainfall and mild seasons. The
Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
orogeny Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An ''orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumples and is uplifted t ...
further isolated ''Sequoia'' because the snowy mountain peaks prevented eastward expansion. The
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
and
Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...
distributions are likely nearly identical to the modern ''S. sempervirens'' distributions.


See also

*
Muir Woods National Monument Muir Woods National Monument is a United States National Monument managed by the National Park Service, named after naturalist John Muir. It is located on Mount Tamalpais near the Pacific coast, in southwestern Marin County, California. It is ...
*
Pacific temperate rain forests The Pacific temperate rainforests of western North America is the largest temperate rain forest region on the planet as defined by the World Wildlife Fund (other definitions exist). The Pacific temperate rainforests lie along the western side ...
*
Redwood National and State Parks The Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) are a complex of one national park and three state parks, cooperatively managed, located in the United States along the coast of northern California. Comprising Redwood National Park (established 1968 ...


References

{{Authority control Conifer genera Extant Jurassic first appearances Flora of California Flora of Oregon Jurassic plants Pacific temperate rainforests Taxa named by Stephan Endlicher Trees of the Western United States ru:Секвойя