Revenge

Does anyone know if this story is true? (and how bad am I that I kind of want it to be true?)

My God, that's a beautiful story on several levels.

Don't know if it's true, but man do I love it.

Snopes verdict: false

Snopes - sequoia fact check

In addition to claiming that he had planted dozens of redwood and sequoia trees around Redondo Beach, California, GoblinsStoleMyHouse also maintained that he was “beginning to get older” and that the vengeful planting had occurred roughly three years prior after he was engaged in a homeowner’s dispute with the city. However, four months previously, he had described himself as a biology major (i.e., someone still in college), not an aging homeowner. Four months before that, the same user had mentioned living in a dormitory room “on a college campus” (not a residence maintained by a homeowner) in a separate thread. The user also freely discussed “trolling” fellow Redditors in mid-2017.
...
Although the claims made in the original post about “Clyde,” sequoia/redwood trees, Redondo Beach, and petty revenge are not impossible, they are highly implausible. An arborist would know, for one thing, that giant sequoias and redwoods would not be able to grow at the rate described in Redondo Beach — or likely at all, given the historic drought that overtook southern California for several years until it officially ended in late 2016. Those trees, which once thickly carpeted all of North America, need quite a lot of groundwater (and, in the case of coastal redwoods, fog) to survive.

Mike Garcia, a state-licensed tree services and landscaping contractor who has lived and worked in Redondo Beach for half a century, told us that this story is impossible for a number of reasons. “Southern California is pretty much a desert. Where are all the sequoias located? North, in San Francisco where we get a lot of rain,” he said
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Coastal redwoods, Garcia told us, only grow in Northern California because of its higher coastal rainfall, a contrast with Southern California’s relatively arid Mediterranean climate: “I was born and raised in Redondo, I’ve worked in this town every single day, and I haven’t seen any sequoias or redwoods growing around here.”
He noted that if a tree were encroaching on a public sidewalk but growing on private property, the city would not uproot the tree but would instead perform what they call root pruning or root trimming: “They will cut the sidewalk out and they will cut the root out and lay the sidewalk again. Otherwise everybody’s trees would be torn out!”

Dc Stewart wrote:Snopes verdict: false

Thank you Dc, it did have some red flags to me.  This kind of story is just so shareable that it probably just circulates.  I appreciate your sleuthing.  Sounds like I shouldn't bother planting these on my property in Maine then too...double darn!

Greg Martin wrote:Sounds like I shouldn't bother planting these on my property in Maine then too...double darn!

Maybe the Dawn Redwood would work?

They do fine out here and are lovely trees Dan, but our native white pines can grow as tall.  I just like the fantasy of a tree sticking up 100' or more above everyone else....silly, no?  Apparently there are specimens of gingko biloba that have grown as tall as dawn redwoods....maybe in 1000 years there will be some interesting big gingkos here....I'll hold out on that fantasy!

Greg Martin wrote:They do fine out here and are lovely trees Dan, but our native white pines can grow as tall.  I just like the fantasy of a tree sticking up 100' or more above everyone else....silly, no?

And far better if the plant is endangered! : )

Greg Martin wrote:They do fine out here and are lovely trees Dan, but our native white pines can grow as tall.  I just like the fantasy of a tree sticking up 100' or more above everyone else....silly, no?

Not silly at all!  I feel much the same way about some of the other potentially-huge trees that maybe-could-but-probably-not grow here.  In fact I just ordered some Monkey Puzzle tree seeds from Experimental Farms Network, despite several climate-related warning flags, on the sole evidence of one short wordless video of a young tree apparently thriving in Oklahoma City.