March 23, 2022
By Aswirbad Das
What would we do without trees? They clean the air, provide shelter to countless fauna and deliver nutritional and medicinal bounty to us. With more than 3 trillion trees scattered around the world, they form an integral part of our survival. Let’s have a look at and marvel at 7 unusual ones!
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
It’s easy to be dwarfed by the giant sequoia tree, both in terms of size and longevity! Also known as the Sierra Redwood, these behemoths located in California’s rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range grow up to 300 feet tall and live for almost 3000 years!
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
These magical-looking trees sport dreamy purple flowers, which hang dramatically from their cascading branches. Primarily native to Asia and North America, wisterias are now widely cultivated in other parts of the world, and they can live up to 100 years.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
The mighty banyan tree of India is a sight to behold! Their branches can span acres of land, making them the world’s largest trees in terms of the area they cover. They are also sacred in many cultures and bear fruits that are delicious and nutritious at the same time.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
The famous Angel Oak tree is believed to be the largest oak tree and oldest living thing east of the Mississippi River in South Carolina, USA. It stands 65 feet tall, 25 feet wide and provides 17,000 square feet of shade. Not to mention its incredible lifespan of over 400 years!
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These fascinating trees found in low-lying areas of the African mainland, Madagascar and Australia are believed to have been around since the times of dinosaurs, 200 million years ago! Each tree can live for around 3,000 years, and their incredibly vast trunks hold up to 32,000 gallons of water, earning them the moniker ‘the tree of life’.
Image source: Alamy
Nature is indeed colourful, none more evident than the majestic rainbow eucalyptus! This breed of eucalyptus is found mainly in the Philippines, New Guinea and Indonesia. As it sheds its bark, it reveals a neon-green inner layer. Over time, as this layer is exposed to air, it ages into a vast multitude of colours—bright reds, blues, yellows and so on!
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
This ‘upside-down umbrella tree’ is found only on the island of Socotra, Yemen. When truncated, the tree bleeds a red liquid, which is actually a form of red resin containing an important element called Draco that is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry to treat health problems like burns, ulcers, etc.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons