confused by its many
peculiarities. Growing to a size of 20 feet in diameter and 350 feet
high, reaching an age of well over 1,000 years and seldom reproducing
by means of seed, it is not surprising that it was long regarded
as ill-adapted to second crop management. Although observing that
suckers sprout from the stumps with great rapidity, the lumberman
generally regarded these mushroom growths as abnormal and temporary,
and believed his virgin timber to be the finally-vanishing remnant
of a prehistoric species unsuited to present-day conditions.

It was next discovered that the suckering habit is no new one,
indeed that the majority of the present stand, however old, began
as sprouts from roots or stumps of its predecessors. This is evident
from the circular arrangement of several trees around the spot where
their parent stood. These old sprouts were of very slow growth,
for they were shaded by a forest of extreme density. As seedlings
they could have neither germinated nor grown, but as suckers they
were kept alive by the parent until light supply became available
through their increasing height or through thinning of the forest.
Under such conditions centuries were required to produce large
trees.

The owner of today, by cutting down the old stand, gives the suckers
conditions hitherto unknown to the redwood. The vigor and susceptibility
to the aid of light, which originally was necessary in the sprout
growth to perpetuate the species at all, now respond to entire
freedom and light in an astonishing manner. Even after severe slashing
fires char the stumps, the latter throw out clusters of sprouts
which grow several feet a year. Logging works 30 or 40 years old
have come up to trees nearly 100 feet high. Naturally such timber
has a heavy percentage of sapwood and is soft and brittle, but
it is already suitable for piling, box lumber and like purposes
and improves constantly.

Since reproduction by seed does not enter into the problem, financial
possibilities depend almost wholly on the nature of the original
stand. There are many types of redwood forest, pure and mixed,
flat and slope. If the old trees are few to the acre, the sprout
clusters will be so far apart that excess of side light will produce
clumps of swell-butted, short limby trees, of little use for lumber;
that is, unless there is also a seedling growth of fir or other
species to fill the blanks and bring up the density. Where such a
nurse growth is