Giant Sequoia
Sequoiadendron giganteum
Three thousand years old. Named after a man whose nation was removed from its land by an Act of Congress in 1830.
The giant sequoia is the largest living thing on the continent, and some have been standing for three thousand years. The genus, Sequoiadendron, is traditionally said to honor Sequoyah, the Cherokee polymath who devised a writing system for his nation more or less single-handedly. The tree endures. The nation of the man it was named for was forced off its ancestral land by an Act of Congress in 1830.
