Albino redwoods

Saturday, 7 November 2015

Prompted by a comment from last week’s post, I hiked the perimeter of El Corte de Madera open space preserve today, hoping to find another giant salamander.

No luck, but the cool autumn day was wonderful, no matter what. I would have been happier with fewer crazy mountain bikies, but you take what you can get.

Sunday, 8 November

Ellen had very nicely organized a short hike for open space volunteers, into an area that’s completely closed off from public access, to visit a couple of groves of albino redwoods. There were about ten or a dozen of us.

It was a little rainy, but beautiful.

Even without albinos, this would be worth a visit. Very nice.

Here is the larger of the two albino groves. The trees in the background are not albinos; the albinos have no chlorophyll, and cannot photosynthesize, so they grow as much as they can, and die off. We see lots of the dead earlier growth here.

The group looking and talking.

This is what they look like close up. Full redwood foliage structure, just no color.

We went on to the second albino observation. This one is actually a burl on the side of a tree. Someone said this might be caused by a virus, and the idea of having an anomalous structure on an otherwise normal tree would tend to reinforce that idea.

More beautiful views, these along the creek.

There were at least two newts at the bottom of those little ponds. Don’t see them?

Here’s one.

Later, we found a couple more, out hiking along the trail.

Great place, great day! Thanks, Ellen.

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Tags: Albino redwoods, El Corte de Madera Creek open space preserve, Newts