Trees are not only pleasing to the eye with their splendor, but also are the lungs of our mother Earth.
The variety of species and shapes of trees is amazing. They grow everywhere, even in the desert you can meet peculiar representatives of the world of trees.
Trees in a person’s life are multifunctional. Their usefulness is difficult to overestimate. Look around. You will find few objects that would not use wood. Even money is made of wood.
But I didn’t want to talk about that. The world of trees is also unique in that their diversity and species differences break many world records. Long-lived trees, giant trees, dwarf trees, the thickest ... And this is not a complete list. It so happened in nature that the 10 tallest trees grow in the United States, and belong to the species Sequoia.
Like unique trees, each of them has its own name. But on other continents and countries, no less surprising and in their own way unique types of trees grow. Each of them deserves to take a place in our gallery of the largest trees on planet Earth.
And we, in order not to offend other representatives of the flora, thebiggest will show you, besides Sequoia, other large species of the woody plant world.
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus, though not the tallest, but one of the fastest growing trees on Earth. In the first three years it grows to 10 meters, and by the age of ten reaches 20-25 meters. The highest type of Eucalyptus is Eucalyptus spherical, growing over 20 meters, with a trunk diameter of 1 meter.
They grow in the main tropical zone of Australia, New Zealand. Found on the islands of Oceania. Eucalyptus trees form large forests.
Due to the fact that Eucalyptus hides his buds under the sepals in science, they received the name Eucalyptus - "well hides."
The popularity of Eucalyptus is due to its widespread use in medicine. In Australia, paper is made from the wood of these trees. Eucalyptus is a record holder by species. In nature, more than 700 species of this tree are found.
The leaves of exotic Eucalyptus feed on no less exotic representatives of the animal world of Australia - Koalas. They spend most of their lives on the trunks and branches of a tree, eating its leaves.
Fir
Fir is the most common pine family species in Russia. This species can be found from Primorye to Kaliningrad.
Siberian fir can grow along with other conifers, less commonly found in deciduous forests. At the same time, it can form pure fir plantations.
This type of tree grows up to 60 meters in height. The average height ranges from 30 to 50 meters. Life expectancy is 150-200 years. A great influence on the size and duration of life has a place of growth. Nordman fir is the highest representative of this family. Growing mostly in the Krasnodar Territory, these trees reach a height of 80 meters. The diameter of the barrel at the bottom of 2 meters. And they live much longer than their relatives - about 500 years.
In the photo: Nordman Fir.
Nordman fir has a beautiful pyramidal crown. The needles are shiny and have a dark green color underneath with two white stripes. Named in honor of Professor Alexander von Nordman, who at the end of the XIX century was in charge of the Odessa Botanical Garden.
Interestingly, fir, unlike Russia, is the most popular tree that is decorated for Christmas in European countries. In Russian families, as we know, it is customary to decorate a spruce, and more recently, a pine. It is widely used by man in the household and medicine.
We advise you to read: The highest mountains of the planet.
Lebanese cedar
Another member of the pine family. Under certain conditions, conifers can grow up to 40-50 meters. The diameter of the tallest trees in this case reaches 2.5 meters.
This beauty grows with tetrahedral dark green needles on the slopes of the Lebanese mountains. He seems to be hiding from people. Mastering inaccessible places at an altitude of 1,000-2,000 m above sea level. Humanity discovered this type of cedar in 1683. The oldest landings date back to the 17th century. These trees are popular among gardeners in southern Europe. It is here that these old plantations of cedars have been preserved.
Cedar is a symbol of Lebanon, the image of this tree is beautifully located on the coat of arms and flag of this African country.
The saddest thing is that in places of natural growth it is almost destroyed as a result of human economic activity. Today, only six groves are preserved, where Lebanese cedar grows.
By the way, about animals that are on the verge of extinction, read our article.
Baobab
A tree with a very original trunk and crown grows in the dry climate of the savannahs of tropical Africa and belongs to the large family Malvaceae.
The second name of the tree is “Andonis Finger”, named in honor of one of the explorers of Africa - Frenchman Michel Adanson.
A distinctive feature of Baobab from other trees is the structure of its leaves. They are 5-7-fingered in this tree. This is one of the thickest trees growing on Earth. At a height of 18-25 meters, the diameter of the Baobab trunk is 8 meters.
Surprisingly, this tree can be reduced in size. In the dry period, the Baobabs learned to reduce their volume, and, with the aim of lowering moisture consumption, dump foliage.
This tree does not have tree rings like other trees, so the age of this representative of the plant world is difficult to determine. Scientists took a specimen with a trunk diameter of 4.5 meters and using the radiocarbon method determined the age of the tree at 4,500 years.
Baobab is widely represented in heraldry. The tree is a symbol of the island of Madagascar and is depicted on the arms of the Central African Republic and Senegal.
Mexican cypress
You can already guess from the name that this type of tree grows in Mexico. The height of the cypress can reach 30-40 meters. In the reference literature you can also find other names for this species of the Cypress family - Cypress Lusitanian and Cypress Portuguese.
Cypress one of the most beautiful trees on Earth has a pyramidal shape with a spreading, dense crown. Trees very poorly tolerate dry air and cold. Due to the original form, the tree is often used as a decoration for landscapes.
In ancient Greece, a young man named Cypress accidentally killed his beloved deer. And he grieved for a long time. Since then, during the days of mourning in Greece, a sprig of cypress is hung at the door. In many nations, in the tradition of planting it in cemeteries.
This tree is the record holder for the thickness of the trunk. In the XIX century, a specimen was recorded with a barrel thickness of seventeen meters and an age of 400 years. Indeed, even now many cypress trees have a trunk diameter of 16 meters and live up to 2,000 years.
Beech
Broad-leaved beech belongs to the beech family of the same name. The names of the tree are similar in Slavic and German languages. It is noteworthy that in some Germanic languages it is consonant with the word "book".
Beech grows in the temperate zone of Asia, Europe and North America. It can reach 30 meters in height. The tallest in the world is the Mexican Beech, growing up to 40 meters. The diameter of a trunk smooth with a gray bark reaches an average of two meters.
Beeches are one of the old-timers on earth. Fossils of beech trunks are found at the beginning of the Tertiary period, about 65 million years ago. Then the forests of this tree covered the vast territories of modern Russia, Canada, the south of Greenland and Alaska.
Leaves with small notches, Beech dumps in the winter. The dense crown of the upper branches does not transmit sunlight to the lower branches, and they gradually die off.
Beech is a picky plant and can grow both alone and in a group with other trees. A feature of this tree is its slow growth, but Buki survive to 400 years. But you can read about animal centenarians on our site thebiggest.ru in this article.
Sequoia
This giant tree is the monotypic representative of woody plants of the Cypress family. The tallest tree growing on Earth.
An interesting story is the origin of his name. Under the name "Sequoia" mankind has known this tree since 1856. In 1847, the Austrian botanist Stefan Endlicher proposed renaming the tree Taxodium sempervivens D. Don, a name that is too complex, in his opinion, for pronunciation. But Edliher died in 1848, without explaining where the name “Sequoia” comes from. In 1952, a new issue of the journal about botany was published, where this new name was first mentioned. But only in 1868 the world learned about the leader of the Cherokee tribe Sequoia (George Hess). This leader was famous for having invented the alphabet of the Cherokee tribe and began to publish the first newspaper of the Indians. So the name of the Indian leader was immortalized in the name of the tree.
Sequoia, growing along the Pacific coast of the United States, can grow up to 110 meters. Sequoia also grows in South Africa, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, the UK, several provinces of Canada and Portugal. Evergreen coniferous sequoia can live up to 2 thousand years.
In the middle of the twentieth century, in order to save this species of trees, National parks and forests were created. Biologists noticed that with the creation of parks, Sequoias began to grow and multiply more slowly. For a long time they could not find the reason for such an amazing phenomenon. Ultimately, research, and in the larger case, logic, helped solve the problem. Forest fires that occurred in the places where Sequoia grows raised the temperature, which was an important factor for the growth and reproduction of trees. In national parks, such fires were extinguished, which negatively affected the development of trees. Fires do not harm the strong, many-thousand trunks of Sequoia, all the more they do not reach the crown of a tree, which is located very high. In this regard, they decided not to extinguish small natural fires in the natural reserves of Sequoia.
And now, directly about the champions
Great banyan tree
This tree, which grows in the Indian Botanical Garden, has a large crown area. The age of this wonderful handsome man is about 200-250 years.
Banyan, whose second name is Ficus Bengal, belongs to the Mulberry family. Red fruits are inedible, although attractive in appearance. But inedible fruits for humans are eaten with pleasure by birds and animals.
The Great Banyan tree grows out of the ground, with many aerial roots. From a distance, a lonely tree looks like a small grove. Having entered the “grove”, you also cannot say that this is one tree. Before the eyes of the tree roots, more like the trunks of separately growing trees.
Distributed Ficus Bengali in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The banyan’s unique ability is the ability of the crown to grow to a circle of up to 610 meters. Scientists have noted another feature of this type of tree. Seeds that have passed through the gastrointestinal tract of a bird can germinate.
Thule tree
This tree, growing on a church square in the city of Santa Maria del Tula in Mexico, is the widest tree on the globe. In 2011, the trunk of this tree was 36 meters 20 centimeters. It is difficult to measure the height of the tree from the weight of the crown, but it is approximately 35.4 meters.
Until a certain time, it was believed that these were several trees that grew together in one trunk. But DNA analysis of the Thule Tree was made, which showed that it was one tree. The age of this giant is also difficult to determine. In the scientific community, it ranges from 1,300 to 3,000 years. There are bold assumptions that the age of the old-timer is 6,000 years.
Mexican taxium, a representative of which is a tree from Thule, an evergreen coniferous tree of the Cypress family. It can grow up to 50 meters in height. Originally from Central America to Europe, this species was introduced in the XVII century. Mexican taxium usually grows on the slopes of mountains, at an altitude of 400 to 2,300 meters above sea level.
Mufusail (Methuselah)
A short, but the oldest tree in the land of Mufusail. This specimen belongs to the species Pine spinous intermountain of the Pine family. Just imagine that the seed from which the tree grew sprouted in 2831 BC. For comparison, Sarmatian nomadic tribes lived on the modern territory at this time from Altai to the Black Sea coast.
This pine grows in California in the Inio National Forest. The exact location of the tree, which was discovered in 1953, was not disclosed.
But now the whole world recognizes that in 2012 a new record for longevity was discovered. This specimen of spinous intermontane pine grows in the White Mountains of eastern California. The age of this tree is determined to be more than 5,000 years.
Helios
In the park Redwood, which is located in the eastern United States, grows the second tallest tree in the world - Helios. Its height is 114.8 meters. This tree was considered the highest in the world until its relative was found in the same park.
Hyperion
The tallest Sequoia specimen was accidentally discovered in 2006 in Renwood Park, near San Francisco. The height of this giant is 115.6 meters.
General Sherman
Another Sequoia is the largest tree in the world today. This powerful tree grows in California, in the sequoia park. The height of this Sequoia is 83.8 meters. The mass is approximately estimated at 1,900 tons, and the age is in the range of 2300–2700 years.
The tree was named after William Sherman, General of the Civil War in the United States. This tree became the largest after another sequoia, Giant Crannell Creek, was cut down in the 40s of the 20th century.
In 2006, a 30-meter-long branch fell from a tree. The diameter of the fallen branch was 2 meters, which is also a record in the category "the largest branch of the tree."
Conclusion
As you can see, the trees are diverse and magnificent. Some impress with their size or age, others with beauty and unusual appearance. Many of their species appeared long before the formation of modern society and live to this day.
It is difficult to overestimate the benefits that trees bring to man. Types of trees are widely used in economic activities: from construction to the production of furniture and tools. Medicine uses all kinds of oils secreted or extracted from tree trunks and leaves. Of the components of many trees produce paints, cosmetics. We must not forget that many fruits and leaves of trees are eaten. But today it is necessary to more rationally approach the use of this natural wealth. Recall that large forests are light Earths and TheBiggest encourages you to uphold the clean air of your home planet in all reasonable ways.
Article author: Valery Skiba