skip to Main Content

A Happy Ending

We love a story with a happy ending! A giant redwood in California that grew to the height of a 30-storey building but was ignominiously felled after a drunken bet, is now about to be reborn in Cornwall thanks to scientists and propagation.

The Fieldbrook Redwood Stump is a bit of a legend in northern California. In 1890, the stump was not a stump at all, but a 4,000-year-old fully grown Californian coast redwood. However, it is said that it was felled under the orders of William Waldorf Astor, a wealthy American living in Britain, who became embroiled in a drunken, bar-room bet about making a table seating 40 from a single cross-section of a tree. It would have been the biggest tree alive today had it not been cut down! Felling is part of our tree surgeon Leeds services, but we only fell trees when there’s a good reason – not because of a bet, can you imagine?

However, cuttings have managed to be cultivated and now 10 clones are currently growing as knee-high saplings as part of an ambitious plan to replant some of the oldest trees in America and Britain. Felling the tree without cause was a shameful act, but it’s not just a modern view of the situation, in fact when he was alive, Lord Astor vowed to sue anyone who repeated the story.

Thankfully, it seems this hundred and twenty five year old story is going to have a happy ending! And that makes this tree surgeon Leeds very happy indeed.

Ian

Back To Top