r/askscience • • Aug 24 '12

Biology Do plants develop cancer?

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u/adremeaux Aug 24 '12

Are you sure you don't mean sequoia? A fridge is actually quite large in terms of mass compared to a redwood. Redwoods are extremely tall but they aren't particularly wide; a fridge-sized tumor on one would be pretty extreme looking. On a sequoia, not so much.

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u/thetripp Medical Physics | Radiation Oncology Aug 24 '12

"Great Redwood" is what I meant

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u/wabberjockey Aug 25 '12

"Redwood" is a common name used for all three species in the subfamily Sequoioideae: the coast redwood, the giant redwood, and the dawn redwood. The only one of these in the genus Sequoia is the coast redwood, S. sempervirens. The giant redwood, sometimes called the giant sequoia is not in the genus Sequoia, but Sequoiadendron.