albino redwood

The mystery of the ‘ghost trees’ may be solved

HENRY COWELL REDWOODS STATE PARK, Calif. — The redwood appears like a phantom: as if from thin air. What looked like a trick of the light a moment ago materializes into a trunk, branches, needles — a tree, roughly the height of a man, with delicate leaves the color of bone. It is an albino redwood, the “ghost” of California’s coastal forests.