The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has been cloning giant redwoods from genetic material still living in their stumps, and planting them around the world.
e360@Yale reports:
Today, giant stumps of ancient redwoods dot the landscape from Oregon to northern California, reminders of the old-growth forest that used to stretch across the Pacific Northwest. Many arborists assumed these stumps were dead, but Milarch and his son, Jake, discovered living tissue growing from the trees’ roots, material known as baseless or stump sprouts. The Milarchs collected DNA from stumps of five giant coast redwoods, all larger than the largest tree living today. These included a giant sequoia known as General Sherman with a 25-foot diameter.
They then used this genetic material to grow dozens of saplings, clones of the ancient trees, a process that takes approximately two-and-a-half-years. The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has already planted nearly 100 of these saplings in the Eden Project garden in Cornwall, England, a couple hundred in Oregon, and is organizing further groves of saplings in nine other countries.
“These saplings have extraordinary potential to purify our air, water, and soil for generations to come,” Milarch said. “We hope [the San Francisco] ‘super grove,’ which has the capability to become an eternal forest, is allowed to grow unmolested by manmade or natural disasters and thus propagate forever.”
(Thanks, John Stewart!) Read the rest
Chiako Yamamoto is the first and only female sensei of Japan's revered bonsai masters. She shows trees of various sizes and ages, including those she inherited from relatives generations ago. Read the rest
Trees "talk" to each other in forests. They are part of underground networks based on symbiotic relationships, known as mycorrhiza, with fungi. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the mushroom. (National Geographic)
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Yan Wang Preston left a medical career because she was drawn to nature photography. Her fascinating shots of old-growth trees replanted in urban areas is both beautiful and depressing. Read the rest
Nine of thirteen "landmark" baobab trees across southern Africa abruptly died in recent years, reports Agence Presse-France. Climate change is blamed.
“It is definitely shocking and dramatic to experience during our lifetime the demise of so many trees with millennial ages,” said the study’s co-author Adrian Patrut of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania.
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Patrik Svedberg posted a picture of a tree that resembled a frond of broccoli. Then another, and another. That's where it started, says Seth Radley, whose video turns the tree's fame and its fate into a parable of bigger things.
The tree is the protagonist, but rather a passive one, letting the plot unfold around it. Each photo contains a story of its own. It’s all in the details and very often with a humorous twist. Just ”beautiful” would bore me to death.
Most people passing by when I’m shooting don’t have a clue what I’m doing, being all caught up with the beautiful view of the lake. And a beach with trees on it. But this is my way of forcing the beholder to see what I see. It’s all about framing and what randomly takes place when I’m there. Sometimes it’s the most beautiful sky. Sometimes it’s a couple in their nineties taking a walk. Sometimes it’s birds, or stars, or just so so grey and dull. But it’s almost never about the tree itself. And I can’t do magic – I‘ve had aurora borealis (or the northern lights), but some things just can’t be. For example, the tree and the lake are positioned straight to the North, so you will never see a sunset behind the tree in @thebroccolitree timeline. No matter what.
PREVIOUSLY IN BROCCOLI:
• Broccoli treehouse
•
They don't make disturbing broccoli ads the way they used to
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Fejetlenfej posted a set of maps of european forest cover to imgur, with posters available on Etsy. Though cover is distressingly spase in places such as Denmark and England, check out the places that seem picked clean, as if trees were a menace to be exterminated without remorse. Is there so much as a shrub in Italy's Po Valley?
Data: Global Tree Canopy Cover, 2010, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
High resolution map of all the forests of Europe. Color scheme goes from black as 0% forest to bright green as close to 100%, dense forest.
After finally forcing myself to focus more on creating new things, this is my first new design in almost a year. I'm quite excited to show it to you guys, so please, any feedback welcome.
Map made mostly with the open-source QGIS software.
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Looking for a monumental tree for a photo or just to enjoy in person? Check out Monumental Trees, a compendium of over 31,000 impressive trees, like this live oak in Virginia. Read the rest
Over at The Last Word on Nothing, esteemed science writer Rebecca Boyle wrote a lovely appreciation of trees. "Apart from humans, maybe, trees are the best form of life on this planet," she writes. From Boyle's essay, titled "Make Like A Tree and Get Outta Here":
Trees remain in one place, but reach elsewhere always. They stretch down into the ground, and they constantly strain toward the sun. They are the embodiment of our shared presence on a rocky planet that orbits a star. Hedgehogs and helminths may be interesting, but they don’t constantly remind us, simply by existing, that we are in a solar system.
Trees are also hosts for every other form of life. Their roots chew up the very crust, a process aided by microbes, and in doing so, trees remake continents. Their bark harbors fungus and lichen. Their branches and leaves shelter and feed insects, birds and mammals. Even now, when humans are capable of building machines that fly to Mars, we still use trees for shelter. We also cut them down and burn them for warmth. Some of us cut them down and bring them inside and festoon them, for a form of psychic warmth that lasts a few weeks and is the only reason I can tolerate December.
Trees are strivers. My pin oak is one of the fastest-growing species of hardwood trees, according to the Arbor Day Foundation. It can grow two feet per year. Trees also bide their time. The oldest living thing on Earth is a tree in Arizona, a bristlecone pine that sprouted from a seed a few years before the invention of writing, in 3200 BCE.
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Trees Sucking on Things is my new favorite subreddit. It's dedicated to trees that have grown around unusual objects, thereby giving the impression of "sucking" on them. Pictured here is an example from getyerhandoffit. Read the rest
Ever wonder how they tie up enormous trees for transport? One option is this three-armed model, though you might be distracted by the guy not wearing a hardhat as a giant metal arm spins near his head. Read the rest
There's so much Florida goodness in this footage.
Vertical video ✓
Stayed to enjoy the hurricane ✓
Big tree with 6 inch deep root system ✓
Vertical video of big tree with 6 inch deep root system 10ft from your house in Florida, where there are hurricanes ✓ Read the rest
The planter of this fir tree used railroad ties to create a deeply-embedded square border around it. As it grew, the roots took their shape, to be revealed after removing the now-rotten wood many years later. Read the rest
4 Artists Paint 1 Tree is a short documentary released by Disney in 1958, in which four of its best animators (then working on Sleeping Beauty) each paint the same old oak tree. An illustration of the depth of artistic brilliance and individuality informing the technical uniformity of an animated feature, it's well worth 15 minutes of your day.
They're all great, but my favorite is Eyvind Earle's, top, closely followed by Josh Meador's on the left. To the right, Walt Peregoy ("Walt Disney was a shit. We made Walt. Walt didn’t make Walt. Walt was an asshole.") holds his modernist rendering. At bottom is Mark Davis, whose technique seems delightfully contemporary. [Thanks, Wendy!] Read the rest
These are the "walking palm trees" of Ecuador. Each year, they could walk as much as 20 meters. Slower than the Ents from Lord of the Rings but, well, real.
“As the soil erodes, the tree grows new, long roots that find new and more solid ground, sometimes up to 20m,” Peter Vrsansky, a palaeobiologist from the Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, tells the BBC. “Then, slowly, as the roots settle in the new soil and the tree bends patiently toward the new roots, the old roots slowly lift into the air. The whole process for the tree to relocate to a new place with better sunlight and more solid ground can take a couple of years.”
Tragically, the incredible Sumaco Biosphere Reserve where they live is being chopped down.
“This [cutting] is a shame, as Ecuador is one of the world countries with the highest partition of protected areas," Vransky says, But the trees can’t walk fast enough to escape the chainsaw and the machetes backed by current legislation." Read the rest
