me and the sherm

Stephanie deserves all the credit for taking this incredible photo of me and General Sherman. I was walking around on the sturdy wooden fence that encircled the tree, trying to take a picture from the best vantage, when Stephanie took the camera from me, squatted all the way down on the wet ground and got this crazy cool shot.

Justin and General Sherman at Sequoia National Park

It occurs to me that this picture and the previous ones don’t really convey the mammoth scale of this tree, it being THE LARGEST ORGANISM ON EARTH! I also realize that I previously claimed to have touched said organism, but hadn’t offered any proof to support so outrageous a claim. Ahem:

Justin and Stephanie touching General Sherman at Sequoia National Park

I should preface the next shot with an excerpt from Wikipedia:

In January of 2006 the largest branch on the tree…broke off. No one was present for the incident, but the branch, which had a diameter of over 2 m (6 feet) and a length of over 30 m (100 feet), bigger than most trees, smashed part of the enclosing fence and cratered the walkway pavement surrounding the sequoia.

That’s a big branch! Check it out:

A limb that fell off General Sherman, in Sequoia National Park

Because it’s not really possible, in my opinion, to take (or show) too many pictures of the world’s largest organism, here’s General Sherman in one last shot, from top to bottom.

General Sherman at Sequoia National Park

This is not General Sherman, but a shot I thought Georgia O’Keefe would be proud of.

Justin in a yonic Sequoia crack

7 Comments

Brian/Dad

You are so right until I saw the picture of you and Stephanie touching the largest orgasm on earth I would never have perceived its enormous size.

I love that picture because I don’t even think I appreciated how freaking big it was—in the context of a Sequoia grove. Took us two tries just to get the shot because we had to run from the fence to the tree. I halfway imagined National Park Rangers to come out or an alarm to go off.

Monica

Excellent shot!

Elena

Hello,
I was looking online for pictures of the largest living organism on Earth, and I was redirected to your page only to find out that you have a picture of the largest tree as opposed to the largest living thing.

I was reading a book about fungae, and found out that the Armillaria ostoyae (honey mushroom) is actually the largest organism in the world. It covers over 2,200 acres and its approximate age is anywhere between 2000 and 8000 years old. It can be found in Malheur National Forest in Oregon.

Elena, that may not be true, check out the Wikipedia article: Largest organisms for more color on the subject.

unit211

It’s not the largest organism on earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium

leiti

redwood is really amazing. but sadly the largest organism on earth is a mushroom ;)

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