50 Fun Facts About Trees

What process do trees use to convert sunlight into energy?

Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants, including trees, use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create glucose (sugar) for food and release oxygen as a byproduct.

What term describes trees and shrubs that seasonally shed all their leaves, usually in autumn?

The word means 'falling off at maturity'; the same term is used for petals that drop after flowering and for baby teeth.

What is the approximate age of the world's oldest known individual tree, Methuselah?

Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine in California's White Mountains, is the oldest known living non-clonal tree at about 4,668 years. The older Prometheus tree (4,960 years) was cut down in 1964.

What part of a tree primarily transports water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves?

The xylem is a vascular tissue in trees that forms a network of tubes, primarily responsible for conducting water and dissolved minerals upwards from the roots to the rest of the plant, including the leaves.

Which common product is primarily made from wood pulp?

Bleaching the pulp is what gives paper its whiteness, a property the trade treats as distinct from brightness.

What science dates a tree's growth rings to the exact year they formed?

It pins down an exact year, where radiocarbon dating can only give a range, and it also underpins the study of past climates from old wood.

Which species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching over 115 metres?

The species has a small natural range and an extremely long lifespan, and many of the biggest individuals carry official names of their own.

General Sherman, the largest known living single-stem tree by volume, is which species?

It stands in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, California.

Which living plant tissue carries sugars made in photosynthesis out to the rest of the plant?

The process is called translocation, and it is carried out by cells known as sieve tube elements.

Bark for wine stoppers and cricket-ball cores is stripped from which evergreen tree?

Once the tree is about 25 years old the bark can be harvested every nine to twelve years without harming it.

Genomic analysis suggests the baobab genus originated on which island, home to six of its eight species?

Its swollen trunk is thought to store water, and its bare-branched silhouette earned it the nickname 'upside down tree'.

Pando, often called the world's heaviest single organism, is a Utah clonal colony of which tree?

Its estimated 47,000 stems share one root system spanning about 106 acres in Fishlake National Forest.

Six ginkgo trees famously survived which 1945 event while growing 1 to 2 km from its centre?

Ginkgo is the last survivor of an order that appeared over 290 million years ago, which is why it is called a living fossil.

The banyan fig is the national tree of which country?

Ficus benghalensis can spread outwards almost indefinitely, and the name banyan is now applied to all figs with that habit.

Hyperion, the world's tallest known living tree at over 116 metres, was discovered in which year?

Naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor found it in a remote part of Redwood National Park; it has grown about half a metre since.

Which Canadian province alone produces about 72% of the world's maple syrup?

Maples are usually tapped only once they reach 30 to 40 years old, and Canadian syrup must be at least 66% sugar.

'True cinnamon', Cinnamomum verum, takes its trade name Ceylon from which country?

Most cinnamon in international commerce is actually cassia from four other Cinnamomum species; all of it is inner bark.

Which Caribbean tree, the 'little apple of death', blisters skin if you stand under it in rain?

Every part of it is toxic, yet its roots stabilise beaches and it is listed as endangered in Florida.

The Major Oak, folklore's shelter for Robin Hood and his Merry Men, stands in which English woodland?

Thought to be 800 to 1,200 years old, it was declared dead in June 2026 after failing to leaf.

Old Tjikko, a roughly 9,568-year-old clonal spruce, grows in which country?

Its visible trunk is only a few centuries old; the root system has kept regenerating new trunks since the last ice age.

Jōmon Sugi, an ancient cryptomeria possibly over 7,000 years old, grows on which Japanese island?

Its discovery in 1968 helped spark protection of the island's forests, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Tree of Ténéré, once the most isolated tree on Earth, was knocked down in 1973 by what?

The lone acacia in Niger's Sahara was so well known it appeared on maps at 1:4,000,000 scale; a metal sculpture now marks the spot.

The Sycamore Gap tree, illegally felled in 2023, stood beside which ancient structure?

It featured in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and won England Tree of the Year in 2016; the stump has since sprouted.

The Wollemi pine, known only from fossils until 1994, grows wild in which country?

Fewer than a hundred mature trees survive in sandstone gorges 150 km from Sydney, and it is critically endangered.

The dragon blood tree, named for its red resin, is the national tree of which country?

It grows on the Socotra archipelago and has an umbrella-like upturned crown.

El Árbol del Tule, the tree with the stoutest trunk in the world, is a Montezuma cypress in which country?

Its trunk measured 42 metres around in 2005; the Nahuatl name ahuehuete means 'old man of the water'.

Dutch elm disease is caused by a fungus spread from tree to tree by which insects?

The name honours the Dutch scientists who identified it from 1921; the fungus itself is thought to be native to Asia.

The Angel Oak, a 400 to 500-year-old southern live oak, stands near which US city?

Its longest branch stretches 187 feet, and its shade covers about 17,200 square feet.

The rainbow eucalyptus is the only eucalyptus native to which kind of habitat?

Native to the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, it is also the only eucalypt whose natural range crosses into the Northern Hemisphere.

The custom of the decorated Christmas tree developed among Protestants in Livonia and which other region?

Early trees were hung with paper roses, apples and wafers; Moravian Christians added candles.

The Japanese word bonsai literally means what?

Related arts include China's penjing, Korea's bunjae and Vietnam's Hòn non bộ.

Salicin, the precursor of aspirin, is found in the bark of which tree?

Bark preparations have been used for pain relief for at least 2,400 years; Bayer's Felix Hoffmann made pure acetylsalicylic acid in 1897.

Which country produces about half of the world's cork each year?

Bark is first stripped when a tree is about 25 years old and then every nine years, with the first two harvests giving lower quality 'virgin' cork.

Once mature, a cork tree's bark is traditionally stripped how often?

Cork cells are filled with an air-like gas, which is why the material springs back after compression.

The genus Eucalyptus contains roughly how many species?

Almost all are native to Australia, where every state and territory has its own species; their leaves carry oil glands.

Hevea brasiliensis, the tree whose latex is the main source of natural rubber, is native to which region?

Wild trees reach 43 metres, but plantation trees stay much smaller because tapping the latex restricts their growth.

The first Arbor Day, on April 10, 1872, saw an estimated one million trees planted in which US state?

J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City proposed the holiday to the state board of agriculture.

The olive was first cultivated between 6,000 and 4,000 BC, most likely in which region?

Phoenician traders spread it across the Mediterranean from the 16th century BC, and Crete grew olives commercially by 3000 BC.

The cacao tree's genus name Theobroma comes from Greek meaning what?

Its stimulant theobromine is a relative of caffeine, and the small evergreen ranges from southern Mexico to the Amazon.

Botanically, the fruit of the coconut palm is classified as what?

Indonesia, India and the Philippines grew 73% of the world's 65.5 million tonnes in 2024.

Which trees survive tidal saltwater with salt filters and aerial roots called pneumatophores?

Their greatest diversity is in Southeast Asia, particularly the Indonesian archipelago.

A 2015 study estimated the number of trees on Earth at roughly how many?

That was about eight times earlier estimates, and suggests some 15 billion trees are cut down each year against 5 billion planted.

Which biome, also called boreal forest, is the world's largest land biome?

It accounts for about 29% of the world's forest cover, with trees racing to grow in the short northern summer.

Alder trees host nitrogen-fixing bacteria of which genus in nodules on their roots?

The partnership lets alders thrive in low-nitrogen ground where other trees struggle.

Fossils found in New York state in 2007 suggest the first tree may have been which genus?

It dates to the Middle Devonian, about 385 million years ago, and reproduced by spores rather than seeds.

How many insect species have been recorded on the English oak in its natural habitat?

Non-native trees host far fewer: the sycamore, from southern Europe, supports few invertebrates in Britain though its bark is rich in lichens.

The Khasi people of Meghalaya, India, grow living root bridges from the roots of which plant?

They are the oldest known examples of tree shaping, maintained over generations.

In Indian tradition, which wish-fulfilling tree emerged from the primitive ocean as one of nine jewels?

Devotees tie threads around its trunk and place icons beneath it, and tree nymphs are said to live in its branches.

What is the theoretical maximum height a tree can reach before it can no longer lift water?

Beyond that the tree would desiccate and die; the tallest known, a coast redwood, stands at 115.85 metres.

The tallest known broad-leaved tree, a mountain ash of 99.8 metres, grows where?

Eucalyptus regnans is the only flowering plant that approaches the heights of the Californian redwoods.