The African Baobab tree

Arboriculturists are often called upon to give tips on tree planting and occasionally one gives into the temptation to add "And don't forget to plant the green side up!"  There is a tree, which lives in arid areas of Africa, which looks as if its roots are sticking up in the air. A Bushmen legend explains the appearance of the remarkable Baobab: the hyena spitefully planted the first Baobab upside down!
Baobabs have enormous trunks, which are living water towers topped with a few wizened limbs. Whenever the opportunity arises the trees gather all the water they can and hold it in their spongy wood. A good specimen is capable of storing more than 25.000 gallons.
In times of drought thirsty elephants have been known to assault a Baobab and destroy them to obtain a precious drink. Barring such desperate attacks and other natural disasters, Baobabs can live to a great age. Some have seen three thousand years pass. With age these great trees will often become hollow and have been known to be used as houses. There was one famous tree, which was used as a bus stop and could shelter as many as 30 waiting people from the burning sun.
The Baobab has an Australian relation which is known as the Bottle tree.

Shortly after I completed the above entry I read an article in the Sept/Oct 2002 issue of "Songlines", the world music magazine about the legendary Senegalese band "Orchestra Baobab", which has just released a new album "Specialist in All Styles". It gave more information in a few lines about the tree than any of my books. Here is a quote for you:
"There's no doubt about it, the baobab is the king of the trees, They tower above the surrounding shrub and acacia trees as we travel across northern Senegal from Dakar to St. Louis. Members of the band tell me about the trees' multifarious uses: you can eat the fruits, cook a sauce with the leaves, make rope from the bark and it has medicinal powers. It's also a symbol of longevity, so no wonder Orchestra Baobab feel it an auspicious name for the band. Then there's all the mythology. Baobabs have traditionally been meeting places for kings and elders and griots - the hereditary historians and musicians of West Africa - were once buried in their vast hollow trunks. So there's a musical connection as well. And just look at them - those vast podgy trunks beneath a tangle of root-like branches that actually make it look like they been upturned."

Britain's Record Trees

The tallest Conifer in Britain is a mighty Douglas Fir at 213 ft (65m) high and the tallest broadleaf tree a Plane at 164 ft (50m).  The greatest conifer girths have been measured on a Yew at about 40 feet with a diameter of 3.88 m and the honour for the greatest broadleaf girth belongs to a Sweet Chestnut, which has a circumference of 44.6 ft and a diameter of 4.33 meters.
The oldest tree is thought to be the Fortingall Yew in Scotland, which may be an amazing 9000 years in age.

The diesel tree

The Copaiba Langsdorfii, an Amazonian tree, produces a sap which is so similar to diesel that it can be poured straight into a truck's fuel tank.

Ecological community

As well as playing an immensely important part in regulating climate, water-flow, and being the lungs of the Earth, trees are of course part of an ecological community. Most trees live in symbiosis (mutual dependency and cooperation) with fungi in the soil amongst their roots. The association between roots and fungi is called a mycorrhizal system. The thin filaments of fungi enormously improve the absorption power of water and nutrients to the tree, so much so that some trees would not be able to grow without the partnership of the fungi. In return the fungi benefit, as they receive nutrients made by the tree's photosynthesis. Fungi cannot make carbohydrates themselves, because they have no chlorophyll.
Trees also support countless small creatures and insects, which in turn feed birds, frogs, etc. A plantation fir tree may support about 16 insect species, which is not bad, but a mature Oak tree allows as many as 240 insects to thrive.

Oxygen and clean air

Just one mature Beech tree can supply the oxygen requirements for ten people. Another way in which trees help is by cleaning up the air we breath. A beech wood can extract nearly five tonnes of dust per hectare per year. The leaves trap the airborne dust particles, which are then washed to the ground by rain.

Water resisting timber

Elm logs are extremely resistant to the decaying influence of water and were used frequently to make water pipes. Old Elm water pipes, laid in London in 1613 were dug up in the 1930's and found to be in perfect order!
Alder logs have often been used to construct sluices and pumps. They were also widely used piles for bridges and houses in wet areas. Old Amsterdam and Venice are famous examples of towns whose foundations owe a huge debt to the Alder. A jetty in the river Severn, build on Alder poles, was dated to have its origin in the era of Roman occupation of Great Britain.

The sweetest tree

The forests of West Africa grow many wonders and treasures. The sweetest of them is the Serendipity berry, which is 3000 times sweeter than sucrose.  In spite of this it has a lower calorie content.

The Brazil nut

There are some trees which cannot be cultivated in plantations, because they depends on their native forest eco-system to survive. The South American Brazil nut tree is dependant on carpenter bees for its pollination. Without the bees, the trees are not able to grow the tasty nutritious nuts and would not be able to procreate themselves. This, along with hundreds of other facts, highlights again the importance of preserving the earth's natural habitats.

A Dutch experiment 300 years ago

"As recently as 300 years ago, scientists were mystified about the raw materials used by the tree in its growth. At that time, an inquiring Dutch physician, J.B. van Helmont, performed an ingenious experiment. He planted a willow weighing five pounds in a barrel of soil that weighed exactly 200 pounds. For five year he patiently watered the willow until it had grown into a sizable young tree. He carefully removed the willow and its roots from the barrel - and found that the tree now weighed not five pounds, but 169 pounds, three ounces. When he weighed the soil in the barrel, he was amazed to learn that it had lost a mere two ounces in weight. Obviously the tree's bulk did not come from the soil, except for the two ounces (which is now known were mineral elements essential for the tree). Somehow, then, the tree was manufacturing its growth out of the water he gave it." (from "The Forest" by Peter Farb and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Time-Life Books, 1961).
Since then we have learned that the tree only uses about 1% of the water it takes up and that the rest is evaporated. The molecules of this 1% of water are 'broken open' by the green chlorophyll in the leaves with energy provided by sunlight,  and combined with the carbon dioxide, a gas commonly present in the air, into sugars to provide the tree with its basic substance to create its bulk.

An acre of rainforest

"A single acre of rainforest can contain as many different plant species as the whole of the UK (around 1,500)."
"Up to 60 per cent of tropical timber imported by the UK is likely to be illegally sourced. Amazingly, this doesn't mean it's illegal to sell it in the UK, just that its origins are illegal. The Government should make it an offence to import or sell illegally sourced timber." (Friends of the Earth website).

A 'species' under threat from loss of habitat 

In the Middle Ages, the people of Chester asked the Black Prince to have the Wirral Forest cut down as it was a habitat much liked by robbers.

An encounter of the third kind

There is a row of 'Tortuosa' Beeches in Brittany, France, which have immensely tortured, weird shaped branches. These trees are thought to have mutated due to the effects of a radio active meteor.

The oldest tree on Earth?

Some trees, which are still alive today, were already growing when the Egyptians built the pyramids. Experts on estimating the age of trees have been updating their methods over the last few decennia and now propose that many trees are thousands of years older than was originally thought.
An ancient coppiced Lime tree in the Silkwood at Westonbirt Arboretum (Near Tetbury, Gloucester, U.K.) has a stool, which was thought to be as old as 2000 years. With John White’s (a dendrologist and former curator of Westonbirt) refined measurement techniques however, this special tree is probably really more like 6000 years old. Apart from our ancient Yew trees, who are in a class of their own, this venerable Lime, may be one of the oldest living organisms in Great Britain.
Before these new developments in dendrology (the science of trees) it was generally excepted that the Bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) was the longest-living tree species in the world.
One such tree, affectionately called 'the Methusaleh', was held to be the oldest living thing on Earth and is over 4.600 years old. The Bristlecones derive their name from the sharp prickles on the cone scales. They are very slow growing trees, which only grow in the extreme condition of the cold, dry, high mountains of Nevada in southern California.

Another contender for the oldest tree record

The Fortingall Yew Tree in Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Scotland is estimated as being between 3,000 and 5,000 years old. According to Alan Meredith, a man who has devoted his life to collecting information about Yews and campaigning on their behalf, the tree may be even older than this, possibly up to 9000 years.
The usual scientific ways of dating a tree, by counting the annual rings in the trunk or by carbon dating, are not accurate when it comes to Yews. The trees have a complex growth pattern and may stop growing (and putting on annual rings) for long periods of time. The Totteridge Yew in Herefordshire was measured in 1677 by Sir John Cullum as having a girth of 26 ft at 3 ft from the ground. When Alan Meredith made the measurement in 1982 and 1991 it was still the same. There had been no growth in width in 314 years, even though the tree is very much alive!
Another Yew, which was carbon dated as being 187 years old, was known to a 1000 years old from historical evidence!
There is also the added 'problem' for scientists, that the trunk of a yew tends to hollow with age, whilst it continues to grow by rooting its branches and forming a grove around itself. There are even many instances of the formation of an aerial root growing inside the hollow trunk. Regeneration from a new trunk within the old tree or many around the circumference the tree will renew the Yew indefinitely. In addition the Yew has an astounding ability to recover and re-grow when it has been damaged, even if humans think the tree 'has had it'.. It can therefore be said, without exaggeration, (certainly from a human point of view) that the Yew can live forever. There is biological reason why the tree should die.
The problem with dating Yews scientifically can thus be summed up by saying that there are no tree rings to count and any piece of wood on an ancient tree is unlikely to be as old as the tree itself.
The Fortingall Yew is acknowledged as Europe’s oldest tree, but if Alan Meredith's many valuable observations are right, it may well be the oldest tree (and living being) in the world. In 1769 the tree’s girth was 56ft (over 17 metres). The two surviving remnants of the trunk are enclosed by a stone wall built in 1795 to deter souvenir hunters.