"The Redwood, the ever-living Sequoia, sempervirens, is the tallest tree in the world. Not just occasionally taller, in individual specimens growing under unprecedentedly favorable conditions, but taller as a whole, as a race, a titan race. Also it produces logs with the greatest diameter amongst all timber trees. Only the Redwood's big brother, the California Bigtree, Sequoia gigantea of the Sierra Nevada is ever greater in girth, but Gigantea is not today in the class of prime timber tree." - from A Natural History of Western Trees (1950)
- Donald Culross Peattie (American author, botanist, and naturalist; b. 1898 - d. 1964)

"The Redwood, the ever-living Sequoia, sempervirens, is the tallest tree in the world. Not just occasionally taller, in individual specimens growing under unprecedentedly favorable conditions, but taller as a whole, as a race, a titan race. Also it produces logs with the greatest diameter amongst all timber trees. Only the Redwood's big brother, the California Bigtree, Sequoia gigantea of the Sierra Nevada is ever greater in girth, but Gigantea is not today in the class of prime timber tree." - from A Natural History of Western Trees (1950)
- Donald Culross Peattie (American author, botanist, and naturalist; b. 1898 - d. 1964)

"The kingdom of plants has a king, the Giant Sequoia or California Bigtree. It is, as a race, the oldest and mightiest of living things. Not even in past geologic times, apparently, were greater trees than Sequoia gigantea. Only the Bigtree's closest of kin, the Redwood of the California coast, approaches it in longevity and girth. In grace and height, indeed, the Coast Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, is a queen among trees, a fit mate for the craggier grandeur of the Bigtree of the Sierra Nevada." - from A Natural History of Western Trees (1950)
- Donald Culross Peattie (American author, botanist, and naturalist; b. 1898 - d. 1964)