Did you know that, in addition to being the tallest and handsomest of trees, Coast Redwoods are also the cleverest? It's true! Let's take a look at one of the many ways these trees are oh so smart...

Reiterations! In botany, reiteration refers to the ability of certain kinds of trees to make clones of themselves *on* themselves - in other words, they're fractal! Coast Redwoods aren't the only trees who reiterate, but they are exceptionally good at it.

Here we have a young Coast Redwood tree with your "basic conifer" shape: a single trunk with horizontal or drooping branches.

As the tree ages, she starts growing reiterations. Unlike the branches, her reiterations grow vertically, parallel to the trunk.

Her reiterations are clones - little copies of herself. She adds more as she grows taller, in response to newly-available sunlight.

Reiterations may grow out of branches or on other reiterations. The tree may also grow stabilizing horizontal branches that connect reiterations to the trunk. Old Coast Redwoods may have dozens or even hundreds of reiterations - the known record is over 700 on a single tree!

Reiterations in the canopy can be difficult to see and even more difficult to photograph, since they're often obscured by surrounding branches and foliage. This Coast Redwood at #RoysRedwoods has a reiteration with a stabilizing branch connected to the trunk.

Sometimes the crown of a Coast Redwood trunk breaks, and the tree grows a new reiteration from just below the break.

Here are a couple of trees at #RoysRedwoods that have broken and are growing a new crown from a reiteration.

What if the trunk doesn't break, but the whole tree falls over? Coast Redwoods can keep on keepin' on by growing new reiterations vertically from the trunk!

That's the case with this tree at #RoysRedwoods, which is growing three new trunks from the old one that was knocked down in a storm. Coast Redwoods are so good at this, they can sprout a new trunk from just a fallen branch (as long as it's lodged in the soil.)

Over time, as leaf litter and silt accumulate, the ground level rises to the base of the new trunks, covering the old one. Less-healthy trunks die back, and the thriving reiterations grow their own root systems.

Coast Redwoods can also sprout new trunks from a special structure called a lignotuber or basal burl/burr...but that's a story for next time.

I found a couple more photos of a fallen Coast Redwood growing reiterated trunks - one of them a couple feet over a creek bed! This is Middle Lagunitas Creek, just south of Lake Lagunitas.