16 Of The Most Magnificent Trees In The World How do I love thee, tree? Let me count the ways; you change carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe, you sequester carbon, and you provide shelter for countless critters. There are many reasons for which we should all be tree-hugging hippies, but within the scope of this article, all we’ll focus on is how amazing some of them look. Granted, not all of these amazing beautiful trees are trees (the Wisteria is a vine, Rhododendrons are shrubs, and bamboo technically belongs to the grass family), but we’ll give them a pass because they are amazing, huge and beautiful. If you know of an amazing tree not on this list, you can submit it at the bottom of this post. 125+ Year Old Rhododendron “Tree” In Canada This huge 125-year-oldold rhododendron is technically not a tree – most are considered to be shrubs. 144-Year-Old Wisteria In Japan Image credits: tungnam.com.hk At 1,990 square meters (about half an acre), this huge wisteria is the largest of its kind in Japan. Image credits: falcor88
The Universal Packing List Most Beautiful Forests in The World Bluebells in Halle`s forest, Belgium. From late April to early May a few acres of woodlands are covered by a splendid carpet of wild bluebell hyacinths. Photo by: Raimund Linke Thick grove of poplar trees, Oregon. Photo by: David Thompson Arashiyama, a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan. Magical winter in Quebec forest, Canada. The Black Forest during night in Baden-Württemberg region, southwestern Germany. Deep in the green forest, France. Natural the tunnel near Halnaker, England. Mysterious glowing light in a Finland forest. Beautiful forest from a fairy tale, Belgium. White carpathians forest in autumn. Splendid yellow forest. Deep in the moss forest, Spain. Camp/trek in the beautiful forests by safely navigating, storing memories, and staying connected with hosted virtual PCs, Windows applications and cloud storage with your phone using Apps4Rent.com. . Bluebells in Halle`s forest, Belgium. Thick grove of poplar trees, Oregon. Arashiyama, a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan.
El fascinante fenómeno botánico de la "Timidez entre árboles" Timidez botánica: el singular fenómeno por el que las copas de los árboles nunca se tocan Quizá en alguna ocasión haya coincidido que, paseando por algún bosque o zona poblada de árboles, hayamos mirado hacia arriba y visto, para nuestra sorpresa, que las ramas y las hojas de los árboles habían crecido pero sin cubrirlo todo, sin tocarse las ramas y hojas de los diferentes árboles entre ellas, como si se tratase de un techo fragmentado, con la luz colándose entre esas grietas como dejadas al azar, o con un propósito que aun está por ser descubierto. Científicos de diversas disciplinas llevan desde los primeros compases del siglo XX cuestionándose qué provoca este fenómeno conocido como “timidez entre árboles”. Por algún motivo, en ciertas especies de árboles las copas crecen sin nunca tocarse, con lo cual se forma un dosel con brechas.
Loggers Accidentally Cut Down World’s Oldest Tree in Amazon Forest World News Daily Report Environment Illegal loggers at the frontier of the Peruvian and Brazilian border have mistakenly cut down what experts claim is the world’s oldest tree after allegedly not noticing they were logging deeply in Matsés Indigenous Reserve, an area where logging is illegal, infuriating local conservation organizations and native indigenous communities. The giant Samauma tree that is thought to be over 5,800 years old judging on its concentric rings and estimated to be close to 40 meters in height was a major part of the native tribes cultural landscape, countless generations of natives having witnessed the long duration of the tree and having included it in their own culture. «It is the Mother spirit of the rainforest, from this spirit-tree came the life force of all things living. They have destroyed Aotlcp-Awak, they have brought darkness upon not only our people, but the whole world» explains local tribesman leader Tahuactep of the Matsés tribe.
Trees Talk to Each Other in a Language We Can Learn, Ecologist Claims A massive web of hair-like mushroom roots transmit secret messages between trees, triggering them to share nutrients and water with those in need. Like humans, trees are extremely social creatures, utterly dependent on each other for their survival. And, as it is with us, communication is key. After scientists discovered pine tree roots could transfer carbon to other pine tree roots in a lab, ecology professor Suzanne Simard set out to figure out how they did it. What she discovered was a vast tangled web of hair-like mushroom roots — an information super highway allowing trees to communicate important messages to other members of their species and related species, such that the forest behaves as “a single organism.” The idea that trees could share information underground was controversial. Having trouble finding research funding, she eventually set out to conduct the experiments herself, planting 240 birch, fir and cedar trees in a Canadian forest. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Photographing Some of the World’s Oldest and Wisest Trees Landscape photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel spent more than two years traveling the world to discover its most remarkable trees. These are not only trees that are the biggest or oldest, although plenty of arboreal overachievers made it onto their itinerary. Cook and Jenshel sought to take portraits of trees that have a cultural, historical, or spiritual significance, from the Bodhi Tree in India cited as a descendent of the sacred fig and under which the Buddha experienced his awakening, to the haunting “Killing Tree” in Cambodia, against which children were bashed by the Khmer Rouge. Wise Trees, recently released by Abrams, features over 60 trees on five continents documented by the married photography duo. Indeed, one is just a stump: the Discovery Tree in California, chopped down in the 1850s. Each specimen in Wise Trees is accompanied with its story. “Trees can live without us, but we cannot live without them,” Cook and Jenshel note in a book essay.
A woman spent 14 years photographing our planet's OLDEST trees, and here are the results Our planet is beautiful. In fact, most of us have absolutely no idea just how lucky we are to live on Earth. So far, our planet is the only one in the known universe capable of sustaining life as we know it. This makes Earth a special place, but there are many other things about Earth that make it a planet unlike any other. When was the last time you took half an hour from your busy schedule to contemplate the world around you? When was the last time you took a nice long walk—leaving your cell phone at home—in a park, a forest, or went hiking or on a picnic? The truth is that our extremely rapid way of life has made us slaves of ourselves, slaves of time, slaves of society, slaves that live life completely blindfolded, ignoring the beauty that surrounds us every single day. Earth is beautiful, and as society moves deeper into a technological era, we forget how to appreciate our surroundings, and how lucky we are to call Earth our home planet. Trees are special. (H/T aNewKindOfHuman.com)
Leafsnap UK app Tips to help you get the best results Leafsnap UK uses cutting-edge visual recognition technology to match the shape of your leaf to thousands of leaf images in its database. Leaves, light conditions and photo style can vary, so here's how to get the best results. 1. 2. 3. 4. from directly above the leaf, with your iPhone parallel to itoutside in even light - shade is better than sunshine, and avoid dappled lightwith as little shadow around the leaf as possible The leaf should be as big as possible without touching the edges of the screen. the background is entirely white and a white border surrounds the leafno hands, fingers or anything else are visible in the picturethe leaf is in focus, particularly its edges or marginsyou photograph the whole leaf rather than individual leaflets Leaflets Some leaves are made up of leaflets (which are leaf-like structures) attached to the leafstalk. No matches? About the Museum team The Museum team: Acknowledgements The origins of Leafsnap
Study: The More Trees We're Surrounded By, The Lower Our Stress Levels Lining city streets with trees reduces physiological symptoms of stress in humans. The thicker the tree cover, the lower the stress levels, study finds. We all know that a walk in nature can help slow the maddening pace of modern life and bring us back into the moment, but a recent study tells us just how many trees are necessary to keep us calm. Researchers put people in stressful situations and then showed them 3-D videos of various “city”scapes, each with different densities of tree cover. The thicker the tree-cover, the lower the subjects’ stress levels dropped. The researchers, from the University of Illinois and the University of Hong Kong, subjected 160 participants to various stressful scenarios, including having them prepare to deliver a speech, or perform a math test, in front of judges and cameras. Once the participants were fully stressed out, they viewed one of 10 six-minute videos of city streets that changed only in the amount of tree coverage, ranging from 0 to 70 percent.
How Planting Trees Affects Climate Change Yet the computer models that scientists rely on to predict the future climate don’t even come close to acknowledging the power of plants to move water on that scale, Swann said. “They’re tiny, but together they are mighty.” Scientists have known since the late 1970s that the Amazon rainforest — the world’s largest, at 5.5 million square kilometers — makes its own storms. More recent research reveals that half or more of the rainfall over continental interiors comes from plants cycling water from soil into the atmosphere, where powerful wind currents can transport it to distant places. Such results also imply a profound reversal of what we would usually consider cause and effect. Forests in the Arctic Swann arrived at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2005 to do her doctoral work with Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist. By the mid-2000s, models had improved enough that scientists could more precisely study the role plants might play in the climate system.
Artrik skog lagrar mer än dubbelt så mycket kol som monokulturer | Natursidan Subtropiska skogar som består av flera trädarter kan i genomsnitt ta upp dubbelt så mycket koldioxid som monokulturer. Det har ett forskningsteam från Zurichs universitet kommit fram till efter att ha gått igenom fakta gällande 150 000 planterade träd i Kina. Redan efter åtta år tar en skog planterad med många trädarter upp mer än dubbelt så mycket koldioxid jämfört med en monokultur. Forskningsprojektet är ett samarbete mellan institutioner i Kina, Tyskland och Schweiz. En av rapportens huvudförfattare Bernhard Schmid från universitetet i Zurich säger: – Vår studie bevisar att planterade skogar är olika när det gäller skydd av klimatet. LÄS ÄVEN: • 40 forskare: Skogarnas betydelse för klimatet har förbisetts De forskare som har utfört projektet säger att undersökningsresultaten har stor ekologisk och ekonomisk betydelse. LÄS ÄVEN: • Bevarade skogar skyddar växter från klimatförändringar Källa: Phys.org
The Crooked Forest: A Mysterious Grove of 400 Oddly Bent Pine Trees in Poland This stand of bent pine trees known as the Crooked Forest is easily one of the strangest places in Central Europe. Located outside of Nowe Czarnowo, West Pomerania, Poland, the nearly 400 trees are widely agreed to have been shaped by human hands sometime in the 1930s, but for what purposes is still up for debate. Each tree is bent near the base at 90 degrees, a form that could possibly be helpful in boat or furniture making. Strangely enough, every tree is bent in exactly the same direction: due North. Whatever the reason, we’re glad photographer Kilian Schönberger (previously) stopped by to capture these photos. Update: Thank you all for your many, many suggestions about the trees.