Trees are pretty much all over the place, and we use their wood in our daily lives. But there are probably a lot of things about trees that you didn’t know.
An average sized tree can absorb as much as 50 pounds of carbon dioxide each year, which is about how much the average car put out in its entire lifetime.
An average size tree can also put out 5,998.78 pounds of oxygen in a year, which is enough oxygen for two people to breath. Their photosynthesis and carbon sequestration gets more efficient as they get older because they continue to get taller throughout the years.
Trees also have a helpful function of keeping things cool for us. Having big trees on properties can lower the electricity used to cool buildings with air conditioning, and therefore can increase the worth of land property by as much as 37 percent.
In addition to providing a lot of shade, trees can also put out as much as 100 gallons of water each day, which means it works quite a lot like an air conditioning system.
Trees don’t just provide a nice support for humans, they also support the rest of nature. Take the English Oak tree as an example, which can support hundreds of different species just by existing. Two hundred and eighty three different types of lichens and insects like to live on the trees, which then become food for birds and some small mammals.
The oak tree also grows acorns which become food for over a dozen different species of animals. Squirrels, mice, badgers, ducks, and deer will all take an acorn to eat.
Trees can actually be used as a natural compass, should you ever truly become lost in the forest. Any moss on a tree will always grow on the north side since it tends to be shadier. When a tree is cut down its inner rings will also give an important clue to the directions.
The rings grow thicker on the southern side of the tree since it received more light, and thinner on the northern side where you might find the moss as well.
Trees have to be quite adaptable to last as long as they do, and they are. If for example a tree gets attacked by insects, it has the ability to flood them out by chemicals called phenolics which they send out through their leaves.
Even more amazing, is that they can then communicate the danger to their nearby trees so that they can put up their defenses as well.
The oldest living organism on the entire planet is thought to be a colony of trees that is located in in Utah. It’s called Pando, and it’s made up of Quaking Aspen. Being a clonal colony, there are many trees but the conjoined stump shares the same DNA and parts of the root are thought to be 80,000 years old. It is estimated to weigh about 6,600 tons, making it the heaviest organism on the planet as well as the oldest.