ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks an understanding of groves in the context of North American forests, and specifically through the contrasting stories of Sequoiadendron giganteum and Sequoia sempervirens groves that were identified in California in the nineteenth century. Two species, leftovers from another epoch: the former, otherwise known as giant sequoias, a collection of tall, barrelled, craggy grizzlies, nestled in the High Sierra Mountains; and the latter, a mist-shrouded expanse of forest made up of dense and slim trunks, the coast redwood. The concept of the formal and sacred grove played an important part in Sequoiadendron. The qualities of a grove are something potentially transferrable to all the forests of the world, with sacred associations taking different forms in different cultures. Economics also paid a large part in the monumentalising of the big trees as, conversely, although they gave up extraordinary volumes of wood the timber's brittleness made it highly unsuitable for lumber.
