Huge life-forms that are both artistic and Tree-mendous

September 7, 2010 in Art

The amazing Baobab, or monkey bread tree can grow up to nearly 100 feet tall and 35 feet wide. Their defining characteristic is the swollen trunk that is actually used for water storage. A single tree can store as much as 31,700 gallon of water to endure harsh drought conditions. Baobab trees are native to Madagascar (it’s the country’s national tree!), mainland Africa, and Australia. As you can see, the hollowed out trunks can be put to many uses, including as toilets stalls and prison cells.

The Chapel Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse, in France, is more than just a tree. It is a building and a religious monument all in one. In 1669, l’Abbe du Detroit and du Cerceau decided to build a chapel in this 500 years old or so oak tree made hollow by a lightning bolt. The priests built a small altar to the Virgin Mary. Later on, a second chapel and a staircase were added. Now, parts of the tree are dead, the crown keeps becoming smaller and smaller every year, and parts of the tree’s bark, which fell off due to old age, are covered by protective oak shingles. Poles and cables support the aging tree, which, as a symbol, may well live on forever, even after the Oak dies.

As a hobby, bean farmer Axel Erlandsen sculpts trees – he prunes, bens, and grafts trees into fantastic shapes and calls them ‘circus trees’. For example, to make this “Basket Tree” arborsculpture, Erlandson planted six sycamore trees in a circle and then grafted them together to form the diamond patterns, and the ladder tree was obviously two separate trees brought together toachieve the desired effect.

Giant Sequoias only grow in Sierra Nevada, California, and are the world’s biggest trees (in terms of volume). The biggest is General Sherman in the Sequoia National Park – one behemoth of a tree at 275 feet over 52,500 cubic feet of volume and over 6000 tons in weight. General Sherman is approximately 2,200 years old – and each year, the tree adds enough wood to make a regular 60-foot tall tree. It’s no wonder that naturalist John Muir said “The Big Tree is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things.” There is another giant called General Grant at Kings Canyon National Park, which actually has a larger circumference, at 107.5 feet, than Sherman’s 102.6 feet, but a 1921 team of surveyors carefully measured the two giants and determined that total volume should be the determining factor in awarding the title of biggest tree.

There is another sequoia species is quite remarkable: the coast Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world.The reigning champion is a tree called Hyperion in the Redwood National Park, identified by researcher Chris Atkins and amateur naturalist Michael Taylor in 2006. Measuring over 379 feet (~~155.6~~ 115 m) tall, The scientists aren’t talking about the exact location of Hyperion: the terrain is difficult, and they don’t want a rush of visitors to come and trample the tree’s root system. That’s not all that’s amazing about the Coast Redwood: there are four giant California redwoods big enough that you can drive your car through them! The most famous of the drive-through trees is the Chandalier tree in Leggett, California. It’s a 315 foot tall redwood tree, with a 6 foot wide by 9 foot tall hole cut through its base in the 1930s.

The Banyan tree is named after “banians” or Hindu traders who carry out their business under the tree. Even if you have never heard of a Banyan tree (it was the tree used by Robinson Crusoe for his treehouse), you’d still recognize it. The shape of the giant tree is unmistakable: it has a majestic canopy with aerial roots running from the branches to the ground. One of the most famous species of Banyan, called the Sacred Fig or Bo tree, is the Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. It is said that the tree was grown from a cutting from the original tree under which Buddha became enlightened in the 6th century BC.Planted in 288 BC, it is the oldest living human-planted tree in the world, with a definitive planting date!

“The Tule Tree” is an especially large Montezuma cypress near the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. This tree has the largest trunk girth at 190 feet and trunk diameter at 37 feet . The Tule tree is so thick that people say you don’t hug this tree, it hugs you instead! For a while, detractors argued that it was actually three trees masquerading as one – however, careful DNA analysis confirmed that it is indeed one magnificent tree.In 1994, the tree was in jeopardy: the leaves were sickly yellow and there were dead branches everywhere- the tree appeared to be dying. When tree “doctors” were called in, they diagnosed the problem as dying of thirst. The prescription? Give it water. Sure enough, the tree soon recovered after a careful watering program was followed.

As you can clearly see, these are among the oldest, biggest and oddest examples of trees the world has to offer and you cannot help but be awestruck by the beauty and diversity on show. Nature, even with a little human intervention, can be truly wonderful.

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