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After fire, coast redwoods use decades-old carbon reserves to recover

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Following a catastrophic wildfire, iconic coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) trees rebuilt their canopies by leveraging massive, stored carbon reserves, some of which were photosynthesized from the atmosphere 50–100 years ago. New leaves grew from buried buds, which had been dormant for 500–1,000 plus years in the oldest trees.

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Fig. 1: Sprouts grow using very old reserves from ancient meristems.

References

  1. Hoch, G., Richter, A. & Körner, C. H. Non-structural carbon compounds in temperate forest trees. Plant Cell Environ. 26, 1067–1081 (2003). A foundational paper characterizing the size of reserve pools in trees.

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This is a summary of: Peltier, D. M. P. et al. Old reserves and ancient buds fuel regrowth of coast redwood after catastrophic fire. Nat. Plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01581-z (2023).

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After fire, coast redwoods use decades-old carbon reserves to recover. Nat. Plants 9, 1956–1957 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01585-9

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