Battle of the trees won by General Sherman

LAST week on this page Damien Enright described the magnificent trees on the neglected estate at Kincragie, near where he lives in Co Cork.

He mentioned that both species of true sequoia grow there and that one species boasted the world’s tallest tree and the other the world’s largest, in terms of mass.

The giant redwood has at least six different names in English, in addition to its botanical name of Sequoiadendron giganteum, and is often called Wellingtonia in this country. It’s believed that a giant redwood is the largest tree in the world. It’s a specimen called General Sherman, which follows the Americans’ odd habit of naming their biggest trees after soldiers.