Limpopo may have the world’s tallest planted tree, but the Western Cape’s sleeping giants are biding their time

While social and a few corners of the mainstream media were agog at the news that Africa's tallest tree can be found in Limpopo, it will be a matter of a few hundred years before that honour passes to one of the redwoods growing in a secluded valley in the Western Cape.

A saligna gum (Eucalyptus saligna) tree named “Fourth Kin”, which stands in the Magoebaskloof state forest and measures a lofty 83.7m from ground to treetop, is the world's tallest planted tree, according to reports.

The next tallest tree in Africa is an 81.5m mahogany (Entandrophragma excelsum) hidden in a valley in Tanzania, Farmer's Weekly reported.

Worldwide, Fourth Kin's closest competitor for the title of world's tallest planted tree is a mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) of 82.25m in New Zealand's Orokonui Ecosanctuary.

Fourth Kin, which was planted by a forester named AK Eastwood in 1906, would have some catching up to do to beat a coastal redwood in California, US, named Hyperion, which at 115m is the world's tallest tree.

Hyperion's two fellow coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), named Helios and Icarus, take second and third spots in the tall tree stakes and are estimated to be between 600 and 800 years old.

Redwoods are famous for longevity and height — good news for a stand of Sequoia redwoods planted nearly a century ago in a kloof near Riversdale in the Western Cape.

The trees are the remnants of scattered redwood plantations foresters planted in the Western Cape a century ago.

The largest stand has more than a dozen trees that form part of a nature conservancy which includes the Grootvadersbosch Nature Reserve, whose 250ha of Southern Afrotemperate forest is the largest surviving forest of its kind in the region.

Along with the redwoods, which are protected despite being classed as exotic trees, the reserve has almost all the 35 typical species of the forest, including ironwood, yellowwood and stinkwood.

The slow-growing redwoods could potentially reach the lofty heights of their American cousins, says Andrew Frost, owner of Brackenhills Private Nature Reserve, which has a tented camp above the kloof.

“They are at least 50m tall,” he said. “And they're still growing.”

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