CHAPTER 1 THOSE AMAZING REDWOODS California's wild and foggy north coast holds a natural wonder It's the amazing redwood forest This forest is home to the coast redwood trees Coast redwoods are the world's tallest trees They can grow higher than 30 story buildings From the ground a person cannot even see the treetops More than 500 000 people visited Redwood National Park in 2015
The redwood forest begins on the coast of the Pacific Ocean and goes into nearby mountain ranges Coast redwoods are evergreens They hold on to their needles all year long This keeps the redwood forest dim and cool Light shines softly through branches high above Standing in this tall forest feels like being inside a huge church or temple Coast redwoods can live hundreds of years Some are more than 2 000 years old These same trees were alive when
the ancient Romans ruled much of Europe and other nearby areas The redwoods are part of a rainy ecosystem called the temperate rainforest Their natural range is in northern California and parts of Oregon THE WORLD S TALLEST TREE The world's tallest known living tree is a coast redwood This tree is named Hyperion after a mighty Greek god Hyperion stands more than 379 feet 116 m tall and is probably still growing Adventurous scientists climbed to its top They measured the tree by dropping a very long tape to the ground Hyperion lives somewhere deep inside Redwood National Park To protect this natural wonder officials are keeping its exact location a secret
