I Didn’t Think I Could Love Trees More Until… ❤️
Two Professors from the University of Costa Rica Shared Stories
All my life I have been surrounded by trees that stand in my neighbourhood or place of work. I pass by a few when I walk to the market. I’ve taken them for granted. I needed a story or two to reconnect me with the marvel that is a Tree. Last Thursday, two very passionate dendrophiles, Professors Eduardo Chacón Madrigal and Gerardo Avalos Rodriguez of the University of Costa Rica, shared stories of trees that reignited my inner tree hugger.
Humans need stories. They help us remember, allow us to connect with experiences of other people and beings, remind us to feel. Here are the stories of individual trees that Eduardo and Gerardo shared to remind us of trees’ almighty presence in our lives.
The Tallest
Hyperion is the name of the tallest known tree — a Wawona, Toos-pung-ish, or Hea-mi-withic, according to Indigenous peoples of the region, or giant sequoia in English — with its canopy reaching 115.55 m (379.1 ft). Hyperion lives in Redwood National Park in California, USA, and is estimated to be 600 to 800 years old, predating European colonisation of Turtle Island.
The Largest
In the Fish Lake National Forest of central Utah, there lives a ginormous tree. He is a quaking aspen with roots that cover 108 acres (43.6 ha) of land. To a human eye, Pando may appear to be a forest of tens of thousands of aspens. But in reality, all the individual trees are actually branches, and he has more than 47,000 of them. Scientists estimate Pando to be about 14,000 years old and his branches typically live to about 100 to 130 years. With branches regenerating all the time, Pando is practically immortal.
For millennia, Indigenous people practiced controlled burning for cultural, transportation, and ecological reasons, which reduced the amount of surface fuels on the landscape, making it much more difficult for lightning fires to reach up to the canopy and wildfires to spread throughout an entire forest. But European colonisers banned cultural burning. To protect Pando, we’ll need to pick up Indigenous cultural burning practices again.
Other (Super) Old Trees
Although Pando’s root system is estimated to be 14,000 years old, he’s what’s called a clonal tree. Another (super) old clonal tree is Old Tjikko, a Norway Spruce who lives in the Fulufjället Mountain in Sweden. He’s about 9,550 to 10,000 years old.
There’s also Methuselah and her unnamed-by-humans neighbour, who are Great Basin bristlecone pines living in the White Mountains of California and are 4,850 and 5,000 years old respectively. Just their leaves alone live up to 45 years. Indigenous peoples used bristlecone pines for medicinal purposes: the Shoshone made a poultice of heated pitch for sores and boils.
The Thickest
The tree that boasts the widest girth is Ahuehuete near the city of Oaxaca in Mexico. The tree’s name in Nahuatl is ahuéhuetl — ‘atl’ meaning water and ‘huehuetl’ meaning old — or elder of the water. In 2005, the trunk’s circumference measured 42 m (137.8 ft) and diametre 14.05 m (46 ft). To give you an idea, it takes about 30 people to hug him and he gives shade to some 500 people. He is a Montezuma cypress that’s estimated to be between 1,400 and 1,600 years old. Zapotec legend tells that a priest of the Aztec wind god Ehécatl, Pechocha, planted Ahuéhuetl 1,400 years ago.
The Loneliest
Once a member of a larger grove of acacia trees in the Tenere desert in northeastern Niger, Tree of Tenere (meaning ‘desert’ in Tuareg), was known to be the most isolated, the loneliest tree. For 400 km in either direction of Tree of Tenere, there was nothing but sand and desert. People were curious how it lived despite such harsh conditions and found that her roots reached underground water source some 35 m (110 ft) below. In 1973, a truck driver managed to run her over and kill her. Now, a metal sculpture commemorates Tree of Tenere where she stood.
Get to know a tree in your neighbourhood. Maybe even hug one. 😊
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