Could giants fit into a forest?

Question

In my fantasy world, the forests are massive, reaching for miles and miles over the country, full of amazing creatures and just wonderful things. The thing is, I want my world to be relatively young, so the trees aren't necessarily very old yet. The whole story around giants is that they were driven from their homeland into the forest, where they live, spreading myths about them to keep people out of the forest. I must clarify, these giants aren't huge, bulky and stupid. I hate that stereotype, though I won't judge you if you use it. The giants in my world are more like incredibly tall people. Have you ever met a really tall, slender person? That's kind of what my giants are like, just a bit taller - about three times the length of an average human.

Though for my giants to live comfortably in the forest, the trees need to be relatively tall, right? I'm thinking about making their home in a valley, where there are fewer trees, but they still need to move through the forest to get places.

Answer 1

Yes, they can travel within forests

Depending on the forest tree type, trees can reach much higher altitudes than what your giants are tall, so the risk of stumbling on a branch is quite low. Also, some trees give of branches only at higher altitude, making only the trunk an issue. To give you three instances of high trees forests :

• The Pacific Northwest forest is quite known for their big, big trees. Plus, the branches start to really span only at a high level.

It's your lucky day! You can estimate how big your giant would look like with these two hikers there :). Photo from Wikimedia Commons

• The Landes forest in France's southwest is composed of a vast majority of Pinus pinaster, or maritime pines in plain English. They usually range between 20 and 30m, and the branches really start to pick up at ~half of it, so quite above your 5-6m giants. Please note it was man-made.
• If you're more leafy than needly, some deciduous forests can do the job. Here's the temperate forest at the Othe's domain. Not the best, but it's still livable.

See the '6' and green line mark on the front tree in the centre? These paints usually stand at around 1 to 1.5m, so you can make a rough scale with it. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Also, I guess that wasn't what you had in mind, but if you take your definition of "forest" further, thorn forests in semi-arid areas can be a choice, too, since trees can be quite scarce there. However, take some good boots to protect yourself from thorns, there are a lot of those.

But...

I kinda cheated. In order to explain why, you have to know that forests actually live in cycles. Indeed, there's a constant competition for sunlight among vegetation : First bushes come in, then frail, short-lived trees like birch or willow trees, then only the taller, stronger and wider ones you want come in. The pictures above are taken at the later stages, and I've skipped the early stage, bushland photos.

What should you understand from this? First, that your world forests should likely be 200 years old or more in order to reach the later stages. That's around how old the Landes Forest is. Then... In a single woodland region, not all areas will be crossable : Depending on many conditions (soil nutriments and acidity, wildfires...), some areas will be less "developped" than others, leading to smaller trees that can block the way to your giants. The same actually happens to us, humans : The only travelers in some parts of forests are small animals like rabbits and rodents, the bushes being too dense for us.

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Side-note

Most if not all animals make trails in woodlands, and if they're sentient and don't like to beat around the bush they do so even more. That's both a nice thing, a risk and an opportunity for you. It's good because trails make it much easier to travel in any land and regardless of size. It's a risk because if your giants existence have to be unproven for commonfolk -like Bigfoot or Nessy-, evident traces of 3m wide dirt roads with big feet marks will move them into reality. But it's also an opportunity because people, when finding the road, will take the chance to exagerate the proportions of the giants when retelling the myth. So think about it 🐶!

Answer 2

I want my world to be relatively young, so the trees aren't necessarily very old yet

Unless your world was created magically in the very recent past, this won't really be an issue. Trees may take hundreds of years to grow to their full mature size, but they take many millions to evolve on a planet that probably took billions of years to solidify and cool nicely.

If your world was magically created, can't the trees be bamfed into existence fully formed?

If they can't be created as adult trees, that raises some tricky questions about how the biosphere of your world was put together, and why giants were created before the rest of the ecosystem was ready.

Also consider that plants like giant bamboo are extraordinarily fast growing. Phyllostachys edulis makes for commercially viable "timber" in 10 years, and can produce "trunks" that are 28m long and nearly 20cm wide. Some bits are edible too, by way of a bonus.

Though for my giants to live comfortably in the forest, the trees need to be relatively tall, right?

Historically, humans seemed to have spent quite a bit of time in savannah like areas, with wide grasslands and comparatively sparse, short trees (at least compared to something like a rainforest, or deciduous forest or taiga or whatever) and they've done just fine.

What they mostly need to be comfortable is a decent supply of food, and big bodies need plenty of calories. It is awkward to farm woodland for food crops and hard to raise herds there, but maybe they have elephants and orchards. Big hunter-gatherers will have a very sparse population unless there's some extremely generous source of nutrients available. In any case, the height of the trees doesn't necessarily correlate with the ability of the giants to feed themselves, though if the trees are all small it might make building shelter somewhat awkward.

Answer 3

Bare Trunks

The trees in the forest don't look like this:

They look like this:

The branches start a few metres above the ground. Plenty of room for giants to walk around.

The age of the tree can be judged by the width of the trunk. I'd say these trees are a medium age.

Answer 4

Yes, African Forest Elephants already do

In the link: https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/african-forest-elephant

African forest elephants live in family groups of up to 20 individuals and forage on leaves, grasses, seeds, fruit, and tree bark. Since the diet of forest elephants is dominated by fruit, they play a crucial role in dispersing many tree species, particularly the seeds of large trees which tend to have high carbon content. They are therefore referred to as the 'mega-gardener of the forest'.

They are smaller than the non-forest variety at about 8 to 10 feet in height, so likely right around the height of your giants, but they tromp through dense forest just like any other. Their size would come with the strength to clear a path, though if it is their home, the paths are likely already carved out from years of use.

Totally possible, and the trees are normal height.

Answer 5

Your giant can easily fit into a forest. As you said, they are only 6 meter tall, so you won't have them picking over three any time soon. Pine or oak are at least twenty meter tall when grown.

What I'm more interested in, is how young your world is. If your giants before being driven to the forest had a homeland, they must have lived there for decades before being driven off, and probably spend more decades spreading said rumor. I don't see how all those events could happen in less than a century, so it would have given even more time for the forest to grow. And when "engineered", a forest can be grown quite quickly. What takes extremely long is the development of a full ecosystem.