From California to Jerusalem: Giant Sequoia Finds a New Home in Israel

At the Hebrew University Botanical Garden in Jerusalem, there is an unusual story of struggle, close care and a great deal of patience: an attempt to grow the giant sequoia, one of the largest trees in the world, in Israel, where it would not naturally be expected to survive the local climate.

The giant sequoia (Giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum) originates in the forests of California. It is used to a cool, humid climate and different soil. Even so, the botanical garden team decided to try growing it in the North America section. The journey began with 80 seeds that underwent “cold stratification,” a simulation of winter inside a refrigerator intended to encourage germination. After about two and a half months, there was remarkable success, 70 tiny sprouts appeared, a figure considered especially high. But then the crisis began. Within a short time, the young seedlings began dying one after another because of a leaf disease that spread in the nursery. The nursery staff tried to understand what was causing the plants’ distress and made a series of adjustments to the growing conditions, changes in irrigation, adjustments to light and ventilation, and moving the seedlings into sun and open air. Later, antifungal treatment was also needed to stop the deaths.

Dr. Uri Fragman-Sapir, the scientific director of the Hebrew University Botanical Garden in Jerusalem, said, “People think plants simply grow or die, but in practice you have to learn to listen to them. In the case of the sequoia, we really felt like a neonatal intensive care team. Every small change in the conditions could determine whether the seedling survived or not. Seeing sequoia trees growing in Jerusalem today is, for us, a small botanical miracle.”

In the end, only 23 seedlings survived. After they were transferred to the garden soil, they had to contend on their own with Jerusalem’s environmental conditions, limestone soil, dryness and temperature changes. Today, years after the project began, the giant sequoia trees stand in the botanical garden’s North America section and have become a symbol of persistence, adaptation and proper care in the plant world.

The botanical garden explains that the giant sequoia story illustrates how much plant health depends on observation, adjustment and understanding of environmental conditions, and that sometimes proper, precise care can make the difference between collapse and success.

Maya Abutbul, a materials engineer at the Technion who manages the nursery, said, “There is the redwood that was acclimatized in the country, and now we have acclimatized the giant sequoia. Today we have about 15 sequoia trees. It is one of the tallest trees in the world and has one of the widest trunks in the world. Here our trees already reach a height of about 3 meters. But in its natural growing area it can reach 50 to 85 meters. It lives for hundreds and thousands of years, among the oldest trees we have, so it is hard to estimate what height it will reach here.”