40 Fun Facts About Gymnosperms

Hyperion, a California tree more than 115 metres high, is the world's tallest known living example of which species?

Coast redwood is the species, and Hyperion was only found in 2006, in a remote corner of a national park. Rangers closed the area in 2022 after visitors trampled the ground around it.

Six ginkgo trees near the blast survived the atomic bomb dropped in 1945 on which Japanese city?

Hiroshima's ginkgos were charred by the blast but were soon healthy again. Japan calls such survivor trees hibakujumoku, and signs mark each one at its temple, garden or school site.

Juniper berries, really fleshy conifer cones rather than true fruit, give which spirit its signature flavour?

Gin is flavoured with juniper cones picked fully grown but unripe, while cooks prefer the ripe, dark ones. They are among the very few spices that come from a conifer.

Welwitschia, a desert gymnosperm that can live for many centuries, only ever grows how many leaves?

Two leaves are all it ever makes, and they keep growing from the base for as long as the plant lives. Weather splits them into ribbons, so an old plant looks like a tangled heap.

Which gem, sometimes found with ancient insects sealed inside, is the fossilised resin of prehistoric trees?

Amber starts as soft, sticky resin, much of it from ancient conifers, which is how animals and plants end up sealed inside. The oldest pieces holding tiny mites are about 230 million years old.

Methuselah, a tree in California's White Mountains that sprouted around 2833 BC, belongs to which species?

Bristlecone pine is the species, and Methuselah has the greatest confirmed age of any living tree that is not a clone. Its location was kept secret for years to protect it from damage.

The monkey puzzle, a spiky conifer named for a Victorian quip about climbing it, is which country's national tree?

Chile is the monkey puzzle's home, where its big round cones hold about 200 nut-like seeds each. The cones crumble apart when ripe instead of falling whole.

The fleshy seed coats that drop from female ginkgo trees are notorious for which foul smell?

Rancid butter is the usual comparison, because the soft outer layer of each seed contains butyric acid. The stink only starts once the seeds have fallen.

Old Tjikko, a Swedish spruce with roots more than 9,500 years old, was named after which late pet of its finders?

A dog lent its name to the tree, chosen by the scientists who found it. The trunk is only a few centuries old, but the plant keeps sprouting new ones from ancient roots.

What does the name gymnosperm mean, built on the same classical root as the word gymnasium?

Naked seed is the meaning, because the seeds sit exposed on cone scales instead of inside a fruit. Ancient athletes trained unclothed, which gave the gymnasium the same root.

General Sherman, a giant sequoia in California, tops every other living single-stem tree on Earth by which measure?

Wood volume is the record, at an estimated 1,487 cubic metres in the trunk alone. Other trees are taller, wider or older, but none packs more timber into a single stem.

Pine nuts, which in Europe come mostly from the stone pine, are a classic ingredient of which Italian sauce?

Pesto traditionally crushes pine nuts with basil, garlic, olive oil and hard cheese. Only about 20 pine species have seeds big enough to be worth trading.

In the timber trade, wood from conifers and other gymnosperms goes by which name, however tough it is?

Softwood is a botanical label, not a hardness rating. Balsa, softer than most softwoods, counts as a hardwood because it comes from a flowering tree.

Pines, spruces and other conifers dominate which biome that stretches across Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia?

Taiga, also called boreal forest or snow forest, is the largest biome on land. The word is Russian and is thought to come from Turkic or Mongolic roots.

A cedar, a conifer whose timber ancient Phoenicians used for shipbuilding, stands at the centre of which country's flag?

Lebanon adopted the flag in 1943 and fixed the design in 1990 as an all-green cedar between red stripes. Before that, the tree was often drawn with a brown trunk.

Many lodgepole pines of the Rocky Mountains keep their cones sealed shut for years until which event opens them?

A forest fire supplies the high heat these cones need, so a burned stand can reseed itself from the treetops. Botanists call the habit serotiny.

Bald cypress trees in American swamps send up woody growths from their roots named after which body part?

Knees is the name, and nobody is sure what they are for. The old idea that they carry oxygen to drowned roots has little evidence, and steadying the trunk now looks more likely.

Paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug sold as Taxol, was first isolated from the bark of which North American conifer?

Pacific yew bark supplied almost all of the drug until 1993, and stripping it kills the tree. Chemists then turned to a compound from the needles of a European relative.

Which solvent, long used to thin oil paints, is distilled from the resin of living pine trees?

Turpentine boils off when pine resin is heated in a still, leaving solid rosin behind. Most of it is now a by-product of pulping wood for paper instead.

Ripe pine cones, which shed seeds that travel on the wind, respond to wet weather in which way?

They close up when wet and open again as they dry, because the scales flex with moisture. Seeds let go in dry weather travel farther from the parent tree.

Ginkgo biloba, the last surviving species of an order about 270 million years old, grows wild only in which country?

China is its only wild home: ginkgo fossils vanish everywhere else, leaving one small central area where the species hung on. For centuries it was thought extinct in the wild.

Which genus in the pine family is deciduous, dropping every needle each year instead of staying evergreen?

Larch grows farther north than any other tree genus, reaching the tundra in Siberia and North America. It is one of the few conifers that go bare each year.

Conifers and other gymnosperms were the dominant plants of which era, popularly called the Age of the Dinosaurs?

Mesozoic forests belonged to gymnosperms until flowering plants appeared in the Early Cretaceous. By the end of the era the newcomers had replaced them as the dominant plants.

Ma huang, a gymnosperm shrub used as a traditional remedy for thousands of years, is the source of which stimulant?

Ephedrine is named after Ephedra, the genus ma huang belongs to. American species of the same genus go by the name Mormon tea.

Welwitschia, among the longest-lived plants on Earth, grows wild only in which African desert?

Namib is its only home, along a long strip of shoreline in Angola and Namibia. The plant even appears on Namibia's coat of arms, growing from a sand dune.

Which Australian conifer was unknown to science until canyon explorers stumbled on a hidden grove in 1994?

Wollemi pine turned up in a gorge of the New South Wales park it is named after, and only a few dozen adults grow wild. Their exact location is kept from the public.

Rosin, the solid left behind when pine resin is distilled, is rubbed onto what to make it grip?

Violin bows are rubbed with rosin so the bow hair grips the strings and makes them sound. Baseball pitchers and ten-pin bowlers use the powder for a surer hold too.

The soft, splinter-free wood of incense cedar, a conifer of western North America, became a standard material for what?

Pencils were long made of red cedar, and when supplies ran low, makers dyed and perfumed incense cedar to resemble it. The wood sharpens easily without forming splinters.

The huge, hooked cones of California's Coulter pine, which can weigh several kilograms, have earned which grim nickname?

Widowmakers is the local name, and people working in Coulter pine groves are advised to wear hardhats. Only one other conifer bears heavier cones.

In which ancient epic do the heroes travel to a legendary Cedar Forest, kill its guardian and fell its trees?

Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu make the journey in one of the earliest great works of literature. Real cedar was just as coveted: the Bible has Solomon send for it to build the Temple in Jerusalem.

Encephalartos woodii, a South African cycad now extinct in the wild, can never set seed for which reason?

Every plant is male, since all the specimens in the world's gardens are clones of one clump found in 1895. No female has ever been discovered.

Which trait do cycads and ginkgo share with ferns and mosses but with no other living seed plants?

Swimming sperm set these plants apart from conifers, whose sperm are carried down a pollen tube instead. One cycad's are about 0.4 mm long, big enough to see with the unaided eye.

Cycads grow special coral-like roots to shelter which microbes, which supply the plants with nitrogen?

Cyanobacteria live inside the roots and fix nitrogen for the plant. They also make a nerve toxin that builds up in the seeds, possibly as a defence against animals that eat them.

Parasitaxus usta, the only known parasitic gymnosperm, taps the roots of another conifer on which islands?

New Caledonia is its only home, where the shrub grows with no roots of its own. It has also lost many of the genes a plant needs for photosynthesis.

Which North American tree is the tallest and most massive of all pines and bears cones up to half a metre long?

Sugar pine is named for its sweet resin, which Native Americans used as a sweetener and John Muir preferred to maple sugar. Muir called the tree the king of the conifers.

Arborvitae, a conifer whose foliage is credited with curing explorers of scurvy, has a Latin name meaning what?

Tree of life is the translation, given for its supposed healing powers. The vitamin-rich foliage is believed to be the remedy that saved Jacques Cartier's party in the winter of 1535–36.

Which kind of plant, common among flowering species, has no living example anywhere among the gymnosperms?

Herbs are the gap: every living gymnosperm is a woody perennial. The group does still manage climbers, a tree-dwelling epiphyte and a parasite.

Most cycads rely on which insects, usually a single species per plant, to carry pollen between their cones?

Beetles do the job for most cycads, each plant usually depending on one specific kind. A few cycads use thrips or a moth instead.

Which New Zealand conifer includes Tāne Mahuta, a giant tree named after the Māori god of forests?

Kauri is New Zealand's bulkiest tree, though not its tallest. Tāne Mahuta, in Waipoua Forest, is the largest one known to stand today and may be 2,500 years old.

Retsina, a wine flavoured with Aleppo pine resin for at least 2,000 years, is a speciality of which country?

Greece is said to owe retsina to ancient wine jars sealed airtight with pine resin. Barrels made the seal unnecessary, but drinkers had grown fond of the taste.