Maximum diameter of a baobab tree. The largest tree in the world: name and photo. Pando - aspen-shaped poplar

Baobab is truly amazing tree. It is considered not only the thickest tree in the world, but also the longest-lived. The baobab can live for more than 2000 years, and other scientists assure that it can live for more than 4 thousand years. However, it is not possible to verify this, because this tree does not have annual rings. The diameter of baobabs can reach 11 meters, and its height reaches 25 meters.

When it rains, the baobab stores water in its trunk, and even termites are unable to damage it, since its bark is thoroughly saturated with moisture, however, due to oversaturation with it, baobabs are susceptible to fungal diseases and often adult trees have a hollow or half-rotten trunk. During the rainy season, the tree can accumulate about 120 tons of water.

During periods of drought, despite the fact that water is stored, the baobab has to slow down its vital activity and during this time its leaves turn yellow and fall off. Then it looks very unusual, it may seem that the upper branches are roots, which is why the baobab is also called a tree with roots growing upward. Baobaboos are not scary and sandstorms, since its roots go very deep into the ground.

This amazing tree begins to bloom only at night, and each flower lives only one night, despite the fact that flowering continues throughout the rainy season, from October to December. Baobab flowers are white and very large, which, as soon as they begin to open, have a pleasant smell, but after pollination they begin to emit an almost stench. And flowers are pollinated by none other than bats, which are called palm fruit bats. Mice flock to the pleasantly smelling buds and manage to pollinate all the flowering trees overnight.

On the same night, the flowers fall off, and only the fruits remain, which are black in color and very similar in shape to a cucumber. Baobab fruits can be eaten; both baboons and people eat them with pleasure. Their pulp contains black seeds and has a sour taste. A drink reminiscent of lemonade and even coffee is prepared from the same pulp. Baobab lemonade perfectly quenches thirst and enriches the body with vitamins B and C, and coffee is prepared by roasting the seeds.

Interestingly, if you tear off the bark from a baobab tree, it soon grows back, and the fallen tree continues to grow if at least one root remains in the soil. When a tree reaches a certain age, it stops growing and its trunk decreases in diameter. It is known that the oldest baobab on the planet, whose age is estimated at 6 thousand years.

It is also unusual for baobabs to die. They slowly settle until they crumble, leaving behind a mountain of fairly durable fiber.

Dear readers of the site “I and the World”, hello! Have you ever looked at the most tall tree in the world? Moreover, standing under him. It seems that its crown rests on the clouds and props up the sky. In the article you will see in the photo and find out which trees are currently taller than others.

In 5th place is the Tsar Oak - 46 m

The height of the royal oak reaches the 15th floor of a high-rise building, and its girth is 2.14 m. The oak has been growing for 800 years in the Pozhezhinsky Park of Belarus. Now the oak has been awarded the title of Natural Monument.

One day, lightning struck its crown and the top burned to the ground. Good people They decided to help, and with difficulty, but they cut down the burnt crown, and inserted and secured a lightning rod into the trunk so that such situations would not happen again.

We gave 4th place to Sequoia “General Sherman” - 83 m

This sequoia lives for 2,700 years, and the trunk diameter has reached 7.7 m. This coniferous tree is much heavier in weight than the largest aquatic animal - blue whale, which weighs 190 tons. The weight of the wood General is about 2000 tons. Sequoia branches are arranged in an unusual way: they grow horizontally and slightly bend towards the ground. In ancient times, sequoias grew on almost all continents, but now they can only be found in Australia and California. Only a few groves have survived, and the largest are protected by law.

3rd place – Sequoia Hyperion – 115.6 m

Although the diameter of the Hyperion is smaller than that of the Sherman (only 4 m), but what a height! And the giant would have grown even higher if the crown had not been damaged by a woodpecker, hollowing out the wood, so the growth stopped. Its age does not exceed 900 years. The name Hyperion was given in honor of one of the ancient Greek titans, which means “very tall.” 43 floors up and you reach the crown.

In second place is Regal Eucalyptus – 150 m

In the mid-19th century, an Australian forest inspector came across a huge fallen giant, 150 meters long. And although this eucalyptus no longer grows, it can be considered the second tallest giant on earth. evergreen tree was almost 20 m in circumference, but history contains information about eucalyptus trees with a circumference of 25 m.

Currently, such giants no longer exist. They did not survive the Australian fires and burned out completely.

Sequoias grow not only on the Australian continent, but also in South America. Interesting fact: all sequoias got their name in honor of the Indian leader of the Sequah tribe, who fought against the conquerors.

1st place – Baobab – 189 m

Where is the tallest tree in the world located and growing? More recently, it was discovered in Africa, 189 meters high. Previously, it was customary to consider sequoias and eucalyptus trees to be the longest, but this baobab is considered taller than all. Its age reaches 5000 years. The thick tree has a diameter of about 9 meters and is perfectly adapted to life in a very hot climate. Its powerful and long roots go deep into the ground for kilometers.

Baobab is good at recovering from damage to the bark by people or fires. Even if the core burns out, the baobab tree stubbornly continues to live. The baobab also blooms during the rainy season and is covered with large flowers with delicate white petals.

We would like to especially note the longest plant - Rattan palm. It belongs to the liana family. So, if this fast-growing plant is delivered, for example, to Paris, then it will be higher than the Eiffel Tower (more than 300 meters).

In the article we showed which is the tallest tree in the world and what it is called. We tried to highlight Interesting Facts some giants. And if you liked everything, suggest reading the article to your friends and acquaintances. See you on the pages of our website!

May 1, 2013

What is the name of the a big tree in the world? It would seem that even a schoolchild knows the answer to this question - of course, it’s a sequoia! These giant trees, which grow in North America near the Pacific coast, reach a height of more than one hundred meters! To whom, if not them, should the palm be given? But it's not that simple. The point is that the question arises of how to count. Should we take into account only the height, or also the thickness and number of cubic meters of wood contained in the largest tree? And take into account only living trees, but ignore those whose dimensions were recorded in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, and then they were cut down or they were broken by a hurricane? But first things first.

The largest tree in the world in terms of height today is the sequoia, which received given name“Hyperion”, she has a “height” of one hundred and fifteen and a half meters. Interestingly, the tree was discovered and measured only in 2006. In second place is also the Helios sequoia with a height of one hundred fourteen meters and sixty-nine centimeters. The gap from the leader is only a little more than half a meter! In third place is “Icarus” with a height of just over one hundred and thirteen meters, and in fourth place is the sequoia “Giant of the Stratosphere” (one hundred and twelve meters).

It may seem that the largest tree in the world is necessarily a sequoia. No. The tallest trees in the relatively recent past were completely different trees that grew in southern hemisphere- in Australia. In 1872, a local forester recorded the height of a giant eucalyptus growing on his property. The height of the tree was much greater than that of the Hyperion: one hundred and fifty meters! And thirteen years later another one was measured Australian eucalyptus.
It turned out to be a little lower, but still significantly higher than all the current sequoias - one hundred and forty-three meters! Unfortunately, these giants did not live to see today. Most likely, these were very old trees, and they died a natural death.

Having figured out what the largest tree in the world is in height, let's see how things stand with coverage. Here, of course, African baobabs hold the palm. With a relatively small height (up to twenty-five meters), they have a coverage of forty meters! Like flattened barrels. The baobab is by far the thickest tree in the world. African explorer David Livingston claimed that he witnessed thirty people sleeping in the hollow of a baobab tree at once! Baobab is also one of the most long-lived trees. Using radiocarbon analysis, it was established that the largest baobabs are of a very respectable age - up to five thousand years! They were already several hundred years old when the construction of the first Egyptian pyramids began.

The largest trees in the world are not necessarily the tallest or the thickest. Banyan tree growing in one of the Indian national parks, compared to other record holders, has a very modest age - about two hundred and fifty years, and a relatively small height - twenty-five meters. But it is famous for being the tree with the largest crown in the world. It covers an area of ​​one and a half hectares! The banyan tree produces so-called “aerial roots” from its horizontal branches. Most of them die, but those that reach the ground take down real, “earth” roots and begin to quickly “get fat.” After a while they are almost impossible to distinguish from the trunk. From a distance, one such banyan tree appears to be a grove, but in fact it is just one tree with many natural “supports”.

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Trees are part of our lives, providing us with oxygen, food, homes, warmth and building materials. There are about 100,000 various types trees, including a quarter of all living plant species on Earth. Among the billions of trees around the world, there are completely unique and amazing representatives.

1. BAOBAB

Madagascar is considered the birthplace of the baobab; it is also common in Africa and Australia. Baobab trees are the oldest forms of life on mainland Africa and many of those that still stand today have been growing since Roman times.

The amazing baobab or “monkey breadfruit tree” can grow up to 30 m in height and 11 m in width. Most for years they remain without leaves. Characteristic feature Baobab is their pot-bellied trunk, which serves as a water storage facility. A baobab tree can hold up to 120,000 liters of water to survive severe drought conditions. Some trunks are so large that people live inside the tree.

One of the most beautiful clusters of baobabs of the Adansonia Grandidier species is located on Baobab Avenue in Morondava in Madagascar. Some baobabs take on the shape of a bottle, a skull, and even a teapot.

2. DRAGON TREE

Dragon Tree in Icod de los Vinos in Tenerife, one of Canary Islands, is a unique representative. It is believed to be between 650 and 1,500 years old, but experts find it difficult to draw exact conclusions as it does not have one trunk. Rather, it consists of many small trunks that hold onto each other as they grow upward.

It has a dense canopy of leaves and gets its name from the resin that is released when its bark and leaves are cut. Residents believe that this is dried dragon blood and have been using it to treat various ailments since ancient times.

3. GIANT SEQUOIA “GENERAL SHERMAN”

Giant sequoias, which grow in the Sierra Nevada of California, are considered the largest trees in terms of volume. The largest tree is “General Sherman” in national park Sequoia, whose height reaches 83 m, volume is about 1,486 cubic meters. m, and weighs more than 6000 tons. The tree is believed to be somewhere between 2,300 and 2,700 years old, and each year the tree grows as much wood as a typical 18-foot tree. It is a true natural masterpiece and the greatest living organism on Earth.

4. PANDO – WASPEN POPLAR

Pando or the Trembling Giant, located in Utah, USA, is an amazing massive colony aspen trees, sprawled across 100 acres in Utah. Almost all the trees in this colony are genetically identical, that is, they are clones of each other. Every tree in this area grows from a single organism, part of a giant underground root system.

Pando is made up of 47,000 trunks and its collective weight is 6,600 tons, making it the heaviest organism in the world. Although average age individual trunks are about 130 years old, the entire body is about 80,000 years old.

5. THULE TREE

The Tule tree is a particularly large tree of the species Taxodium mexicanis, which is found near the city of Oaxaca in Mexico. This tree has the largest trunk girth (58 m) and a trunk diameter of 11.5 m. They say that the Tule Tree is so thick that instead of you hugging it, it hugs you.

The tree is believed to be about 2000 years old. For a time, detractors claimed that there were actually three trees camouflaging there, but careful DNA analysis confirmed that it was, in fact, one beautiful tree.

In 1994, the tree was under threat: the leaves became painful yellow and there were dead branches everywhere. The tree was dying. When the “healers” of the trees were called, it turned out that the problem due to which the Tule tree suffered was ordinary thirst and it needed to be treated with water. Naturally, after careful water procedures, the tree came to life.

6. TREE OF LIFE

The Tree of Life in Bahrain is the loneliest tree in the world. The mesquite tree is located on the very high point barren desert of Bahrain, hundreds of kilometers from other natural trees. It is believed that its roots extend several tens of meters to aquifers. The exact age of the tree is unknown, but it is believed to be over 400 years old.

However, the secret of the Tree of Life is not its size, age or shape, although it is quite large and very beautiful. The most amazing thing is that it stands alone in a barren desert on the highest point of Bahrain, in an area where there is absolutely no water. In a place where it seemed nothing could survive, this tree seems to radiate life itself. People come here in droves because local residents They believe that the tree stands on the site of the Garden of Eden.

7. VOLLEMIYA

Despite its uniqueness and beauty, interesting qualities Wollemia is not hidden in appearance, but in his history.

Wollemia, which grows in Australia, is a real living dinosaur. The oldest fossil of the Wollemia tree dates back to 200 million years ago. When, in 1994, scientists suddenly discovered living tree Wollemia, they were simply dumbfounded.

The exact location of these coniferous trees was carefully hidden in order to protect those remaining trees, of which there are less than 100 left in nature. To save these trees from extinction, a program was started in 2006 that allowed the general public to purchase Wollemia seedlings and now they can be seen in various botanical gardens.

8. CASHEW PIRANGI TREE

This famous tree, located near the city of Natal in Brazil, is a 177-year-old cashew tree that covers almost 2 hectares of land. It was planted in 1888 by a fisherman who did not know that the tree had a genetic mutation that allowed it to take up so much space. Unlike a regular cashew tree, when the branches of the Piranji tree touch the ground, it takes root and continues to grow.

Today this tree serves as a tourist attraction. When you approach this largest cashew tree in the world, you will feel like you are entering a forest. In fact, this is all one tree, the size of which reaches 8400 square meters. m. The tree is 80 times larger than the average cashew tree and covers an area larger than a football field, bearing about 80,000 fruits per year.

9. TENERÉ TREE

The Ténéré tree is mentioned in this list because it no longer exists. A lone acacia tree growing in the Sahara Desert in Niger, Africa, which was more than 300 years old, was the only tree within a radius of about 400 km. It was the only tree that remained from huge forest, which was swallowed up by the merciless desert. When the scientists dug a hole next to the tree, they discovered that its roots went down to a depth of 36 m below the groundwater level.

In 1973, the Tenere Tree was hit by a drunken truck driver, and today a metal monument was built on the site in honor of the Lone Tenere Tree.

10. BANYAN: MAHABODHI TREE

The banyan tree is named after the banyan trees or Hindu traders who sold their goods sitting under this tree. Even if you have never heard of the banyan tree, you will probably recognize it. The shape of this giant tree cannot be confused with anything: a majestic dome with aerial roots that descend from the branches to the ground.

One of the most famous types of banyan tree called ficus sacred or Bo tree is the Mahabodhi tree in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The tree is said to have been grown from a cutting from the actual tree under which Buddha achieved enlightenment in the 6th century BC.

Planted in 288 BC, it is the oldest tree in the world planted by man with an exact date of planting.