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   From: kamala-whore@latimes.com   
      
   They are what scientists call charismatic megaflora, and there   
   are few trees anywhere more charismatic than the three most   
   famous species in California. People travel from around the   
   world simply to walk among them in wonderment.   
      
   The giant sequoia. The Joshua tree. The coast redwood.   
      
   They are the three plant species in California with national   
   parks set aside in their name, for their honor and protection.   
      
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   Scientists already feared for their future. Then came 2020.   
      
   The wildfires that burned more than 4 million acres in   
   California this year were both historic and prophetic,   
   foreshadowing a future of more heat, more fires and more   
   destruction. Among the victims, this year and in the years to   
   come, are many of California’s oldest and most majestic trees,   
   already in limited supply.   
      
   In vastly different parts of the state, in unrelated ecosystems   
   separated by hundreds of miles, scientists are drawing the same   
   conclusion: If the past few years of wildfires were a statement   
   about climate change, 2020 was the exclamation point.   
      
   This past summer in the Sierra Nevada, a fire ecologist named   
   Kristen Shive camped in one of the few remaining ancient groves   
   of giant sequoias, among trees as old as the Bible. This fall   
   she revisited the grove, and stood somberly among the dead.   
      
   “They’ve lived through literally hundreds of fires in their   
   lifetimes,” Shive said. “Now we’re seeing them killed in one   
   fell swoop.”   
      
   To the south, Drew Kaiser, a botanist, hiked through what had   
   been one of the largest remaining stands of the Joshua tree, the   
   otherworldly yucca, in the Mojave National Preserve.   
      
   Historically, the desert is not a place prone to rampaging   
   wildfire. But Kaiser beheld a colorless moonscape dotted with   
   the skeletal remains of collapsing Joshua trees. He estimated   
   that 1.3 million had been destroyed in a single blaze in August.   
      
   “I love Joshua trees,” Kaiser said. “I can’t stand to see them   
   go.”   
      
   Far to the north, near the Pacific Ocean, an environmental   
   scientist named Joanne Kerbavaz inspected old-growth redwoods,   
   the tallest trees on Earth. She has been coming to Big Basin   
   Redwoods State Park to roam the forests since she was a little   
   girl.   
      
   “The smell of redwood in the summertime was the aroma of my   
   youth,” she said.   
      
   In August, fire swept through 97% of the park, home of 4,400   
   acres of old-growth redwood trees. When Kerbavaz returned in   
   November to clamber through the destruction, all sense of   
   timelessness and continuity had been rearranged.   
      
   “The forest I saw as a kid will not be back for some time,” she   
   said.   
      
   The enchantment that California’s forests provoke can be   
   scientific or spiritual. For the state’s three famous plant   
   species, it is probably both. The allure stems from each one’s   
   unique blend of size, shape and age. Their heft, their height,   
   their persistence. Their sheer audacity.   
      
   They are never found together. Yet they share an uncommon   
   ability to silently stand there and elicit a reaction — gasps,   
   giggles, photographs, memories. How many other trees can attract   
   a crowd?   
      
   Resiliency is key to their magnetism. They survive where others   
   would not. They stand their ground, with panache. Sequoias and   
   redwoods can live thousands of years on their way to dwarfing   
   most everything around them. Joshua trees are the most good-   
   natured of desert plants, frozen in dance poses as they endure   
   the harshest of environments with flair.   
      
   They have a timeless quality that can make their onlookers feel   
   small and impermanent by comparison, the way a night sky does.   
      
   That is why 2020 is particularly alarming. Each of these species   
   already faced a rising onslaught of threats to long-term   
   survivability, from drought to development, blanketed by the   
   unknowable future effects of climate change.   
      
   While there is not broad concern about any of the species going   
   extinct — yet — 2020 injected a new sense of urgency.   
      
   “The apocalyptic chickens are coming home to roost, way sooner   
   than we thought,” said Christy Brigham, the resource manager at   
   Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, home to dozens of the   
   remaining sequoia groves and the many of the biggest trees in   
   the world. “We are seeing impacts now that we thought we would   
   see in 50 years.”   
      
   SEQUOIAS   
      
   SEQUOIA CREST, Calif. — Until a few years ago, about the only   
   thing that killed an old-growth giant sequoia was old age.   
      
   Not only are they the biggest of the world’s trees, by volume —   
      
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