Santa
Cruz CALIF.OREG.
Coast redwood
range (Sequoia
sempervirens)Coast redwood
range (Sequoia
sempervirens)UNITED
STATES
UNITED
STATESEXPLORE
NGM MAPS. SOURCE: U.S. FOREST SERVICESanta
Cruz CALIF.OREG.
Coast redwood
range (Sequoia
sempervirens)Coast redwood
range (Sequoia
sempervirens)UNITED
STATES
UNITED
STATESchimeras, organisms with two distinct sets of genetic
instructions. One of these trees, which was growing
near a right-of-way in Sonoma County, is so beloved
that when railway builders threatened to cut it down
in 2014, local residents forced the company to dig it
up, load it onto a truck, and relocate it.THE TREES FIRST APPEARED IN PUBLICATIONS in
the mid-1800s, when settlers started noticing their
curiously creamy foliage. Since then, and with a
few exceptions, the albinos’ locations have
been closely guarded to protect them from
trophy- clippers or decorators, like those
who once festooned an opera house with
the snowy sprigs.
The towering albino we visited at
dawn has been known since the 1970s,
says Moore, now one of the world’s
experts on the trees. He and a colleague
are keepers of the albino redwood map, an
evolving guide to the roughly 630 known albi-
nos growing between southern Oregon and central
Cali fornia. Some of these trees have been cultivated
by enthusiasts. Others, maybe a hundred or so, Moore
has stumbled upon accidentally, including the one he
glimpsed while snarled in beach traffic on a notorious
California highway. Mostly, he says, he chases them
based on historical reports or tips from locals: “It’s
like a treasure hunt.”
Later in the day, he shows me the first albino he
ever encountered. It lives in Henry Cowell RedwoodsState Park, where a well-trodden loop trail allows
visitors to experience the majesty and monstrosity
that is an old-growth redwood grove: thick, towering
trees with twisted bark and gnarly burls, split crowns,
fused trunks, and even a burned-out cavern big
enough for dozens of people to squeeze into.
Surrounded by ferns and fragrant, dewy leaf lit-
ter, these massive trees dominate the landscape
and lend an almost primordial appearance to the
forest. Moore’s first albino, in contrast, is a roughly
human-height mix of brown and white branches,
tucked into an unmarked grove near the
park’s railroad tracks. He found it in 2011
after he watched a documentary about
the albinos and decided to go see one
for himself. “And around the same time,
I’m realizing, Oh, I could do botany as
a living?” Moore recalls. “You know, I
really like plants.”
Everything about albino redwoods is
tinged with mystery. How they survive, and
sometimes appear to thrive; their physiology; their
anatomy; the mutations that make their bone-white
color. Even the scientific literature describing the
trees is sparse. Recently, scientists went hunting for
albino- producing mutations but were thwarted by the
redwood genome itself—a colossal, just sequenced
assemblage of 26.5 billion base pairs distributed
among six pairs of 11 chromosomes. (Humans,
by comparison, have three billion base pairs and
23 pairs of chromosomes.)This photo, of “a gleaming bush nonchalantly sprouting next to the curving metal,” was made in 2021. An albino redwood is
also growing by the railroad tracks in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in an 1877 photo that researcher Zane Moore has.