Red migrants

I was please to be prompted by the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, possibly first mentioned in these pages at reference 6, to read the article at reference 1, mainly about planting lots of coastal redwoods and giant sequoias in the north west of the US, to the north of their presently Californian habitat, which may be getting a bit too hot and dry for them to thrive.

The history of moving plants and animals about for conservation or other reasons is a bit chequered - think cane toads - but the story here seems to be that these trees, although big, are fairly harmless. They might grow pretty big, but they are slow breeders and are unlikely to be considered invasive any time soon.

The article comes with lots of handsome pictures from one Richard Mosse, presumably the one at references 2 and 3. He seems to be rather fond of red, with Bing turning up lots of it and with red and orange trees being much thicker on the ground in the present article than green trees. Furthermore, I have never seen a dawn redwood anything like the shape of the left hand one of the two snapped above. The ones you get in Surrey - for example the two or three at Hampton Court Palace - all seem to be much thinner relative to their height. The result of growing two quite close together?

Lets hope the people we read about in the article keep the trees coming. I am content to let the scientists worry about the possibility of their disturbing the ecosphere in slow time.

PS 1: for the record, my own count of Wellingtonia, aka giant sequoias, aka giant redwoods is now standing at 107. A count which has slowed down but which is still moving.

PS 2: after posting this, I came across the picture story at reference 7. Where the bottom line is that by mid-century there are going to be around 2.5 billion Africans, and a lot of them are going to be unemployed young men and women. The Old World had better get on and learn how to respond to ever larger numbers of wannabee migrants - given that it seems unlikely that they are going to want to move to the wide open spaces of Asiatic Russia. Even supposing that they would be welcome there.

References

Reference 1: Can We Save the Redwoods by Helping Them Move: The largest trees on the planet can’t easily ‘migrate’ - but in a warming world, some humans are helping them try to find new homes - Moises Velasquez-Manoff, New York Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mosse. 'an Irish conceptual documentary photographer, living in New York City and Ireland'. Whatever one of those is.

Reference 3: https://www.richardmosse.com/.

Reference 4: https://www.ancienttreearchive.org/.

Reference 5: https://www.moisesvm.com/. Right chap, but the site appears to be inactive.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/big-trees.html.

Reference 7: The World Is Becoming More African: Part one of a series on how the youth boom is changing the continent, and beyond - in the dilemmas of those who remain - Declan Walsh, Hannah Reyes Morales, New York Times - 2023.