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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A very tall, evergreen, coniferous tree (Sequoia sempervirens) native to the coastal ranges of southern Oregon and central and northern California, having small seed-bearing cones with peltate scales and unflattened branches.
  2. n. The soft reddish wood of this tree. Also called sequoia.
  3. n. Any of various woods having a reddish color or yielding a red dye.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The most valuable of Californian timber-trees, Sequoia sempervirens, or its wood. It occupies the Coast ranges, where exposed to ocean fogs, from the northern limit of the State to the southern borders of Monterey county, but is most abundant north of San Francisco. It is the only congener of the famous big or mammoth tree, which it almost rivals in size. It grows commonly from 200 to 300 feet high, with a straight cylindrical trunk, naked to the height of 70 or 100 feet; the diameter is from 8 to 12 feet. The bark is from 6 to 12 inches thick, of a bright cinnamon color; the wood is of a rich brownish red, light, straight-grained, easily worked and taking a fine finish, and very durable in contact with the soil. It is the prevailing and most valuable building-timber of the Pacific coast; in California it is used almost exclusively for shingles, fence-posts, railwayties, telegraph-poles, wine-butts, etc.
  2. n. The name is also applied to various other trees. Thus, the East Indian redwoods are Soymida febrifuga, also called East Indian mahogany; Pterocarpus santalinus, the red sandalwood (see sandalwood); and P. Indieus (including P. dalbergioides) the Andaman redwood, or padouk. The last is a lofty tree of India, Burma, the Andaman Islands, etc., with the heart-wood dark-red, close-grained, and moderately hard, used to make furniture, gun-carriages, carts, and for many other purposes. Other trees called redwood are Cornus mas, of Tuikey; Rhamnus Erythroxylon, the siberian buckthorn; Melhania Erythroxylon of the Stereuliaceæ, an almost extinct tree of St. Helena: the Jamaican Laplacea (Gordonia) Hæmatoxylon of the Ternstrœmiaceæ; Colubrina ferruginosa, a rhamnaeeous tree of the Bahamas: Ochna arborea of the Cape of Good Hope; Ceanothux spinosus, a shrub or small tree of southern California; and any tree of the genus Erytkroxylon. Redwood is also a local name of the Scotch pine. See pine.
  3. Stark mad.
  4. n. The chittagong-wood, Chukrasia tabularis.
  5. n. Guilandina crista; and.
  6. n. Baryxylum Linnæi (Peltophorum Linnæi of Bentham).

Wiktionary

  1. n. countable, uncountable the USDA-preferred term for the species Sequoia sempervirens.
  2. n. countable any of the evergreen conifers belonging to the genus Sequoia in the wide sense.
  3. n. uncountable the wood of the species Sequoia sempervirens.
  4. n. uncountable, UK, obsolete the wood of the species Pinus sylvestris
  5. adj. Pertaining to any of the evergreen conifers belonging to the genus Sequoia in the wide sense
  6. adj. Pertaining to the wood of the species Sequoia sempervirens.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A gigantic coniferous tree (Sequoia sempervirens) of California, and its light and durable reddish timber. See sequoia.
  2. n. An East Indian dyewood, obtained from Pterocarpus santalinus, Cæsalpinia Sappan, and several other trees.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. either of two huge coniferous California trees that reach a height of 300 feet; sometimes placed in the Taxodiaceae
  2. n. the soft reddish wood of either of two species of sequoia trees

Etymologies

  1. red +‎ wood (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “The broadest recorded coast redwood is 20 feet in diameter.”

    A Walk In Muir Woods

  • “The Sequoia sempervirens, which is commonly called redwood, is distributed along the Coast Range, the trees thriving only when they are constantly swept by the sea fogs.”

    History of California

  • “In fact, there’s a forest full of them called the redwood forest.”

    Simon & Schuster: Sincerely

  • “I think cutting down a redwood is the moral equivilant of murdering a human being. previous - next”

    nessus Diary Entry

  • “My house is going on 160 years old, built entirely of redwood, which is largely the reason it's still here in termite-land.”

    Mandolin Cafe News

  • “Perched in the upper branches of the redwood were the four remaining tree-sitters who had taken to the branches in an ultimately doomed effort to save the impressive collection of Coastal Live Oaks and other trees marked for destruction by the university.”

    The Berkeley Daily Planet, The East Bay's Independent Newspaper

  • “Before ten o'clock the adobe wall of the patio was warm enough to permit lingering vacqueros and idle peons to lean against it, and the exposed annexe was filled with sharp, resinous odors from the oozing sap of unseasoned "redwood" boards, warped and drying in the hot sunshine.”

    Susy, a story of the Plains

  • “No, I don't have one in my yard (which is not serpentine), but I do have a dawn redwood which is doing quite well.”

    RealClimate

  • “Our house sat in a redwood forest populated by bobcats, mushrooms, and what my German-speaking grandmother thrillingly referred to as Wildschweinen, “wild pigs,” disappointingly called “boar” in English.”

    Simon & Schuster: The English Is Coming!

  • “We become the other—whether a friend, butterfly, redwood forest, giraffe, or seahorse—through our intensely felt union with it.”

    Simon & Schuster: The Bushman Way of Tracking God

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