Iconic PNW ‘trees of life’ are dying. Scientists now know why

Nathan Gilles, Columbia Insight Eugene Register Guard, August 31 2022

heir branches drop gracefully, then curve upward to their tips.

They’re conifers, yet they don’t have coarse, rough needles.

Instead, they have soft, folded, scale-like “leaves,” bright green when new, darker when old. Their trunks — covered in thin reddish-brown bark — can grow to nearly 20 feet in diameter, though they aren’t ramrod straight like a Douglas fir, but noticeably wider at their bottoms, where flowing buttress-like structures form.

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