YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. - The largest remaining stand of sequoias in the world is found in Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park in California, which I visited in September. It is so impressive that people have felt a strong urge to note the individuality of the giant trees by giving them names.

At one time, most of them had signs displaying their names were nailed to them, a practice now forbidden. Still, the need to recognize the trees’ special qualities is so strong that signs have been placed in front of the most unusual trees, which have been given official names.

Some of the giants are recognized for what they can do. The 270-foot Shelter Tree, now called the Haverford Tree, has a 30-square-foot cavity at its base, which can shelter as many as 15 horses during storms. I could stand inside the hollow Telescope Tree and look up at the sky.

Although the heartwood has been burned out, the tree is still alive and growing.

Even many of the fallen trees, which decay very slowly, are given names: the Fallen Monarch, the Elephant’s Foot, the Fallen Massachusetts Tree. The most famous is the Fallen Wawona Tree, or the Tunnel Tree. People came from all over the world to see the tree with the tunnel you could drive through. Cut in 1881, the tunnel was 26 feet long, 8 feet wide and 10 feet high. The tree lived until 1969.

A tunnel has been cut through another tree, but since driving is no longer permitted in the area, I explored it by foot. Dripping from the roof of the cut was red sap full of tannin that protects the trees from insects and diseases. The fallen trees, after hundreds of years of lying on the ground, show few signs of decay. They will take hundreds of years to return to the soil.

The red sap is water-based rather than turpentine-based. This makes the trees more resistant to fire. Fire is their friend in a number of ways, and the park does controlled burns to protect them and keep them healthy.

At first it didn’t strike me that fire had been very friendly, because many trees had blackened bark at their feet and several were burned all the way through. The Clothespin Tree had a burn through its center 70 feet high and 16 feet across at the base. Despite the size of the burn, the tree was quite healthy. Regular burns keep the underbrush down so the tree can get the space and light it needs to grow. Fires also germinate the seeds.

If the underbrush is not burned regularly, it builds up and can then create fires that are large enough to set even a sequoia on fire.

More romantic are the human characteristics that have been given to some of the trees. As I approached the Faithful Couple, it looked like one tree until I looked up a 100 feet and saw that it was divided into two. The two trees have grown so close together that they share the same bark and root system.

Three Maidens and the Bachelor consist of three trees close together, just a short distance from a larger fourth tree. Their root systems have also become entwined; if one falls, the others will probably be pulled down with it.

On the 1½-hour tram ride though the Mariposa Grove with me were 35 other visitors, including an Englishman who said he had come to the United States just to see the trees. Also aboard were a group speaking German, a couple who spoke Italian and four people who spoke a language that sounded like Russian. This is truly one of America’s international attractions.

On the southern edge of Yosemite and 35 miles from the central attractions over winding mountain roads, it is worth the extra effort to have this unique American experience.