Sad news- the world's largest cedar has fallen

[rbtree]

The Lake Quinault Redcedar, the world's largest, and the largest tree outside of California, has fallen. I visited it June 5 and it appears to have failed--to a 20 foot tall stump, sometime after July 7. See http://northcoastnews.com/…/quinault-big-cedar-has-fallen-t…

It's failure has been imminent for years, as the article states, and as my images show:

In the above 8mm fisheye image, the large opening can be seen. The below image was shot inside the tree and looking straight up. Lots of stalactyte like wood formations, with no attachment to earth. The tree was clearly a shell, and bound to fail sooner or later. Only a tiny strip of live cambium supplied energy to the bit of live canopy... some of the foliage above was of the hemlock that leaned into the cedar.

 

[ropensaddle]

Looks like it was marked by someone. I never have understood the mentality of having to inscribe. It has to be old our red cedar here does not rot for a long time!

 

[rbtree]

Agreed. But that wood was already long gone from being solid when that happened. This once grand tree had clearly been in decline for many many years, likely centuries. The failed wood from the Kalaloch cedar was also quite rotten, though nothing like that of the San Juan spruce, which I just saw. It was #2, but lost most of its top.... the breakout is close to 6 feet across and was almost all punk.