Groves of towering redwoods that were saplings when the Roman empire was at its height have been saved in a middle-of-the-night deal with the timber company that owns the tract along California's for-shrouded Pacific coast.The state and US government spent $480 million to buy 31.2 square km of the headwaters forest and two other redwood groves from the Pacific Lumber Company and set the proporties aside as public preserves.The deal was reached in last-minute negotiations just before Monday's midnight deadline. The agreement, which concludes more than a decade of negotiations, also imposes timber-cutting restrictions for the next 50 years on an additional 860 square km of redwoods that Pacific Lumber still owns.