Albino Redwood

Continued from: Coast Redwoods

Copyright 2009 - 2011 by Mario Vaden

The rare white redwoods called albinos are also called ghost redwoods. Albino redwoods are very rare.

They are not parasites. Not in the sense of germinating and later attaching their roots to mature redwood roots. The albino redwoods appear to be sprouts that originated from a host redwood: a part that formed from it. Being part of a redwood does not make something parasitic. Flowers, bark and cones are attached to redwoods and receive what they need from it.

There are supposed to be about 50 known to exist, the tallest being about 70 feet tall. If 50 are known to exist, my estimate is that 100 or more probably exist. But the extra ones are probably inches tall. My reasoning is that if Lost Monarch the largest coast redwood was not discovered until 1998, there must be undiscovered plants under 12 inches tall.

If you find an albino redwood, don't removed twigs for souvenirs or for propagation. There is too little albino foliage in existence to risk picking their bones clean.

Albino redwoods are not sterile as once believed. In 1976, Dale Holderman, a forester, discovered an albino redwood with buds and pollen. This was included in the book The White Redwoods by Douglas Davis and Dale Holderman. The pollen was dusted onto normal redwoods to see if albino redwoods could cause seeds. Holderman discovered that of 161 seedlings, 56 were green, 43 variegated green & white, and 62 others were all white. The 62 all white seedlings died in a matter of days, because they were not attached to another green redwood. The experiment showed that green redwoods were made that could retain the albino gene. This sheds more light on how white redwoods can sprout from green redwoods, like near burls.

At least 6 albino redwoods grow in Humboldt Redwoods State Park of Northern California near Highway 101. The location of one was published, but I want to skip detailed directions here because of how trafficmy site gets. But it is within 1.5 miles of Founders Grove near Avenue of the Giants.

Another albino redwood is 3 to 4 miles north of Redcrest, California. About 20' tall.

Big Sur campground forest was reported to have a small albino redwood too.

One man, Will Russell, Ph.D., once noted at sempervirens.org that he encountered about a dozen during albino redwood during hikes in the Santa Cruz mountains.

There is no guarantee that one you read about will still be there when you go looking. The lifespan is more or less unknown, but every reference I found says they don't live a long time on the redwood scale of life.

Lacking chlorophyll for photosythesis, albino redwoods are dependent upon a parent redwood host for nutrition. Albino redwoods are actually part of another redwood. They can grow out of a burl growth too. Basically, they begin as basal sprouts or sucker growth growth from roots.