Giant Sequoia Nat’l Monument

There are over 80 groves of big trees (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in California.

The best known of them include the north and south Calaveras groves near Arnold, the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves in Yosemite, and 28 groves in Sequoia National Park.

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That leaves 47 other groves, most of which are included in the Giant Sequoia National Monument designated by President Bill Clinton in 2000. The Monument encompasses 328,315 acres in the Sequoia National Forest, south of Sequoia National Park and east of Visalia.

Giant Sequoia are conifers, so they have no fall color, but their forests are populated with orange black oak, yellow bigleaf maple, rosy dogwood and other deciduous foliage.

Nhi Casey found the black oak peaking when visiting the Monument on election day, appropriate considering that many of the trees have been named in honor of past presidents.