The Largest and Oldest Trees

This arti­cle will focus on record trees — the old­est, tallest and thick­est tree. We will also talk about the prob­lem of defor­esta­tion and their regen­er­a­tion.

In 1997, a 24-year-old girl named Julia Hill set the world record for stay­ing in a tree by climb­ing a giant red­wood tree and not descend­ing from there for 728 days. Thus, she drew pub­lic atten­tion to one of the most seri­ous prob­lems of our time — the prob­lem of wide­spread defor­esta­tion. In addi­tion, she also man­aged to save the red giant from destruc­tion. Unlike humans, a tree does not suf­fer from var­i­ous dis­eases with age — part of the tree can die while oth­er parts con­tin­ue to grow, allow­ing the tree to exist for thou­sands of years. Trees are one of the most valu­able and under­es­ti­mat­ed resources on the plan­et. Accord­ing to the World Bank, the annu­al turnover of the wood mar­ket is 270 bil­lion dol­lars. We are very depen­dent on trees, although we do not notice or real­ize this. Tak­ing trees for grant­ed, we do not under­stand that one day they may dis­ap­pear for good.

In the depths of Red­wood Nation­al Park lies the 700-year-old Hype­r­i­on, the tallest tree in the world at 115.5 meters. Red­woods like Hype­r­i­on are tall, not very thick trees that grow in the Cal­i­for­nia coastal strip. Most of the spec­i­mens pro­tect­ed by the state are in the Sequoia Nation­al Park, includ­ing the thick­est tree — the sequoia of Gen­er­al Sher­man. It is sur­pris­ing that their own ecosys­tems are formed on the trunks of these giants — lichens, ani­mals, plants, and even small trees grow­ing on the upper tiers of the sequoia.

While the Hype­r­i­on is the tallest tree in the world, the giant Gen­er­al Sher­man is the largest tree in vol­ume and one of the old­est. The 2200 year old gen­er­al is 83 meters high and weighs over 6 tons with a base of 32 meters (diam­e­ter)

The Mon­tezu­ma Cypress tree in Mex­i­co is not as tall and mas­sive as the afore­men­tioned sequoias, but sur­pass­es them in girth with a diam­e­ter of 48 meters. At over 2000 years old, it is also one of the old­est trees. It seems that these are sev­er­al trunks grow­ing side by side, but DNA analy­sis showed that this is one tree.

Now let’s move on to the old­est tree in the world known to sci­ence — a pine tree called Methuse­lah, 4842 years old. These trees live so long because of their spe­cial unpre­ten­tious­ness and abil­i­ty to adapt to var­i­ous con­di­tions. The ancient pines are rel­a­tive­ly low, the tallest being 18 meters high. The main threat to such trees is peo­ple. The loca­tion of this pine tree is kept secret so as not to cause irrepara­ble dam­age to the tree.

Speak­ing of durable trees, we can also men­tion aspen — with its com­plex root sys­tem, it can sur­vive any­thing, even a huge for­est fire. Hav­ing com­plete­ly burned out, the roots will still give rise to a new tree. Dur­ing exca­va­tions, liv­ing aspen roots 80,000 years old were dis­cov­ered. Let’s move away from the top­ic of giants for a sec­ond — the rain­bow euca­lyp­tus is con­sid­ered the most beau­ti­ful tree.

The top­ic of the largest trees would not be com­plete with­out men­tion­ing the banyan tree — a sacred tree in Bud­dhism and Hin­duism. In the wild, banyans grow to huge sizes, but not in height and not in diam­e­ter. Their crown grows, some­times cov­er­ing an area of ​​​​up to 100 square meters. This is achieved thanks to the roots of the branch­es from the main trunk, which tend to the ground, there­by cre­at­ing an incred­i­ble pic­ture.

These trees are lucky, they are pro­tect­ed at the state lev­el, and may stand for more than one cen­tu­ry. But not all trees are so lucky, trop­i­cal forests are dis­ap­pear­ing at a cat­a­stroph­ic rate. At the moment, only 5% of the orig­i­nal num­ber of red­woods remains, the for­est is cut down every­where and human­i­ty has not yet real­ized the threat hang­ing over it