DAVIS >> For 150 years, they’ve been a mystery: white trees in the middle of deep green California redwood forests.
Scientists know that albino redwoods are genetic mutations that attach themselves to the roots and branches of normal redwood trees and live by drawing sugars off the huge host trees. There are roughly 400 in California, with Santa Cruz County having more than any other area. Their locations in many places are kept secret to keep poachers and souvenir hunters away.
Now, a San Jose researcher is showing that these “ghosts of the forest” may be more than a biological novelty, perhaps solving a generations-old question.
Zane Moore, a doctoral student at UC Davis, analyzed the needles of albino redwood leaves in a lab and found that they contain high levels of the toxic heavy metals nickel, copper and cadmium.
The phantomlike plants, which rarely grow more than 10 feet tall, appear to be drawing away and storing pollution, some of it occurring naturally in the soils — particularly shale soils — and some left from railroads, highways and other man-made sources that otherwise could degrade or kill redwoods.
“They are basically poisoning themselves,” he said. “They are like a liver or kidney that is filtering toxins.”
Moore, who also plans to test albino leaves for lead, mercury and other compounds, has worked with arborist Tom Stapleton, of Amador County, to carefully catalog the locations of albino redwoods across the natural range of redwood forests, which stretches about 400 miles from the Oregon border to Big Sur. Some albino redwoods also exist outside the range, where redwoods have been planted by people. There are numerous examples in the Central Valley — and even one in Seattle.
Moore’s research will be included this week at the annual Coast Redwood Science Symposium in Eureka.
“The results are fascinating,” said Emily Burns, director of science at Save the Redwoods League in San Francisco. “Albino redwoods are parasites, and if these sprouts have some sort of a function, that’s really cool.”
Additional research is needed, she said, to find answers to other key questions such as, “Why aren’t there more albino redwoods?”
