Professor Spots a Mysterious Tree High up in a Sequoia National Park — Then He Realized Why
Ecologist Professor Hugh Safford began scratching his head as his eyes fell upon that giant tree at an altitude of 12,657 feet. On one side of him was a foxtail tree, and on the other side, a lodgepole pine, but this guy seemed to have popped up out of thin space, standing there as a great mystery. Safford had started off his journey to walk along the trails of California’s High Sierra, hiking on the slopes of Mount Kaweah in Sequoia National Park, but this mysterious tree made him stop in his tracks, prompting him to think hard about what it was and why it was here, according to BBC Discover Wildlife.
It was the season of fall. Trees were dropping leaves. And this bizarre, crooked tree made him realize for the first time that Jeffrey pine trees can also flow towards high-elevation levels, spurred by a variety of factors, as he elaborated in the findings published in the Madroño journal. "Then I thought, 'What's that?'" Safford recalled to BBC Discover Wildlife about the moment he stood sandwiched between the two trees, facing this mysterious Jeffrey pine. "It made no sense. What is a Jeffrey pine doing above 11,500 feet?" Jeffrey pine, a tree with tall pencil-like barks, is known to reside in the uppermost mountain zones, all those harsh, windy areas where winds dancing above them cause them to drop their pinecones as big as softballs.
According to Tahoe Trail Guide, these trees typically shoot till elevations of 6,000 to 9,000 feet, often featuring grooves and furrows like those in pineapples and beehives. Scientists often classify this tree with the German word “Krummholz,” which translates to “crooked wood.” The texture of its wood causes it to shape its branches in a twisted manner, like skeletal arms of a spooky monster. Although Safford didn’t mention smelling an aroma, it is very likely he did, because these trees are known for their characteristic fragrance that reminds the person of things like butterscotch, vanilla, and pineapple.
But the most astonishing fact was that this guy was looming at a height of 12,657 feet, much taller than its typical habitats, which are known to lie somewhere between 6,000 and 11,500 feet. Later analysis revealed that the cause behind this raised elevation was climate change and melting ice. Another possibility, Safford pondered, could be Clark’s nutcracker, a bird known for storing pine seeds at high altitudes. The bird caches tens of thousands of seeds, eventually burying them in the ground, helping these trees to germinate and spread uphill.
"I'm looking at trees surviving in habitats where they couldn't before, but they're also dying in places they used to live before," Safford told the news outlet. "They're not just holding hands and walking uphill. This crazy leapfrogging of species challenges what we think we know about these systems reacting as the climate warms." Another remarkable observation was that the tree Safford stumbled upon hadn’t been observed through satellite images or AI tools, showing how even the most sophisticated technology can fall short when studying nature. "People aren't marching to the tops of the mountains to see where the trees really are," Safford explained. "Instead, they are relying on satellite imagery, which can't see most small trees.”
"What science does is help us understand how the world functions. In this case, where you see the impacts of climate change most dramatically, they are at high elevations and high latitudes. If we want our finger on the pulse of how the climate is warming and what the impacts are, that's where it will be happening first. We just need to get people out there," he professed.
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