Giant Sequoias at La Granja de San Ildefonso Segovia

There is in Spain a majestic palace at whose entrance you will find standing guard the most amazing collection of giant trees. The palace is located in the town of San Ildefonso in the province of Segovia, which if you are not familiar with Spain, is about an hours drive north-west of Madrid.

The Royal Palace at San Ildefonso was built by king Philip V starting in 1719 and was patterned a great deal on the French palace of Versailles which was built by Philip´s grandfather Luis XIV of France.

There are a great many trees around the royal gardens but in this post I want to focus on two Giant Sequoias near the front entrance of the main palace. Giant Sequoias are not native to Spain but there were most likely brought back to Spain by Spanish explorers who started establishing missions in California in the late 18th Century. The most reliable information that I have found states that the Sequoias of San Ildefonso were planted around the year 1870 which means that they are now about 140 years old.

There are two Giant Sequoias at San Ildefonso. The one on the left in the image above has been called "el Rey" (the King) in Spanish and is 40 meters tall and has a trunk circumference of 13 meters. "the King" is more rugged looking of the two and has the look of having been broken off at the top at some point.

The other Sequoia is called "la Reina" (the Queen) and is 34 meters tall and has a trunk circumference of 9 meters. "the Queen" (image below) is definitely the better looking of the two and has a fine conical shape.

A sign near these trees identifies their species as well as those of the other great trees that stand nearby. I will mention some of these in a future post.

Giant Sequoia tree - Sequoiadendron giganteum

This tree (above) is one of six Portland, Oregon Heritage trees of the Giant Sequoia species. It is located on the campus of Western Seminary at 55th and Hawthorne in Southeast Portland. It is over 100 feet tall and has a trunk circumference of 22 feet. In the nearby area around Mt. Tabor there are many more large specimens of the Giant Sequoia tree, some of which are also listed as Portland Heritage trees. They are not difficult to spot as they usually stand quite a bit taller than the trees around them. The ones that are easily accessible try the area around the water reservoirs on the west side of Mt. Tabor park.

The image above shows the “cone” of the Giant Sequoia tree both as a green cone and also what it looks like when it is dried out and falls to the ground. These cones are about 2 inches or 5-6 cm in length.
The leaves of the Giant Sequoia are similar to those of the Western Red Cedar but are thicker and have pointy ends as can be seen in the pictures below. The younger specimens of this tree species usually have a uniform conical shape with branches all the way down to the base of the tree. Very old and large specimens are much more irregular with lower branches a long way up the tree.
The Giant Sequoia is the largest tree species in the world when measured by volume. There are taller trees and trees with wider trunks at the base but there is no other tree species that comes even close to the volume of the Giant Sequoia trees. The champion of this tree species is the General Sherman tree.