To Jeff Cruise, who lives on the western side of Purvis, it’s his “baby” – a 48-foot tall redwood tree that he planted 21 years ago.
The 63-year-old Cruise, who lives with his 95-year-old mother, calls the tree “Shyla” after a dog that’s buried at the foot of the redwood.
“I had an American pit bull for 17 years, and I buried her 12 years ago at the foot of that tree,” he said. “I named it Shyla. So, Jeff Cruise’s redwood is named Shyla. If you keep a bulldog 17 years, you get attached to it.”
In 1997, Cruise bought three redwood seedlings for $30 apiece and planted them in front of the home on Purvis to Baxterville Road. One lived. Cruise didn’t realize the tree had grown so tall.
“I was guessing 25 feet, but they told me it was 48 feet,” he said. Last year, I could walk out to my shed out here and it was six feet shorter than my magnolia. My mama planted that in 1962. Now the redwood is four feet taller than the magnolia when you look at it again. It has caught up with the magnolia tree and gone ahead.”
Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service forester Butch Bailey said he recently visited the tree, which is more widespread and much larger in California.
“It’s very unusual,” he said. “They certainly aren’t native, so any that are growing here were planted intentionally by someone. But then again, we plant all sorts of things that aren’t native, like crepe myrtles, roses and Bermuda grass, to name a few.”
Bailey said he measured the redwood tree, which is classified as “Sequoia sempervirens.”
“The tree is 48 feet tall and 14.5 inches in diameter (just under 4 feet in circumference),” he said. “Mr. Cruise says it’s 14 or 15 years old, but I didn’t core the tree so I can’t confirm that. So it’s a medium-sized tree for our area, but not ‘yet’ a giant or anything.
“In its native range, California redwoods can grow to over 350 feet tall – almost double the height that trees around here typically reach. However, this one would have to be extremely lucky to reach its genetic potential in size because the environmental conditions here will probably prevent that. Where these trees naturally grow, it stays moist all the year long with cool nights and moderate days.”
The branches on the redwood resemble a fir tree in some ways, getting some interesting observations from passersby, Cruise said.
“It is a phenomenon of nature,” he said. “Everybody thinks it’s artificial. For 13 years, they thought it was an artificial Christmas tree. They said, ‘Why don’t you decorate it?’ I said, ‘You put something on my tree and we’re going to have to talk.’ That’s my baby.”
Cruise said the geographical location of the tree may help its growth.
“There used to be a monument out front,” he said. “Some old crazy buck stole it about 50 years ago. This is the highest place above sea level between the Gulf Coast and Meridian and all the way to some place on the other side of Texas. That may be why that tree lived because it’s so high above sea level. I remember when I was a little boy, my grandfather showed me that monument.”
A railroad spur used to run next to the house for trains to load timber and head south, Cruise said.
“It was a turnaround for the trains carrying logs because everything to New Orleans was downhill,” he said.
Cruise said he expects to see more growth on the redwood.
“I would just about bet my life that it will be 50 feet tall by the end of the year,” he said, at first figuring the tree to be 44 feet tall. “For the last three years, it’s been growing about six feet a year. Just this limb here will grow six inches in the next two months.”
Bailey, the forester, has less than optimistic choices for the redwood tree’s long-term future because of the hot summers.
“Any very dry summer is really going to tax it,” he said. “But the biggest danger for this tree in terms of it reaching such great height is the amount of lightning and high winds we have here, something the northern California coast doesn’t have to deal with. If the tree makes it through a hundred summers, I imagine a tornado or a hurricane will knock it over if lightning doesn’t blow the top out first.”
However, Bailey said he was glad that Cruise planted it and that he got a chance to see it.
“It’s still a very cool tree and not something people around here get to see very often,” he said.
