It’s now summer in South America, where everyone’s favorite summer snack – ice cream – literally grows on trees! Inga, or ice cream beans, grow plentifully throughout South and Central America, and in addition to their sweet tasting pulp, they have incredible soil regenerating properties that have the potential to combat destructive slash and burn practices in South America’s rainforests. Read More
March 2018 update: The Whistler Tree has been named the 2018 European Tree of the Year. It couldn’t have gone to a more deserving tree!
Trees can be useful in many ways. They can provide food through fruits or nuts, building materials by milling their trunks, or shade in cities beneath their canopies. But the Quercus suber has been used for centuries for a different purpose: its bark is the source of cork. The versatile material can be harvested many times throughout a tree’s lifetime, but one particular tree in Portugal is so large that it produced more cork in a single harvest than most others in their entire life cycles. Read More
In a small geographical area of Morocco between Marrakesh and Essaouira, a one of a kind tree has grown for tens of thousands of years. Argan trees have long been known by locals for their medicinal properties, but in recent years they’ve gained international attention, with both positive and negative consequences. Read More
For Americans at home and abroad, there are few things that usher in the holidays like the enormous Christmas tree in front of Rockefeller Center. More than 125 million people visit the tree each year, and the lighting ceremony is televised shortly after Thanksgiving. Read More
Christmas trees are a staple feature in many homes around the end of the year, along with stockings, wood fires, and hot cocoa. All of these are fitting for a visit from the frigid North Pole, but in the southern hemisphere the weather is more appropriate for barbecues on the beach. In New Zealand, residents have taken advantage of the early summer weather by adopting a particularly festive local tree (Pohutukawa) as the symbol for Christmas on the island. Read More
Palm trees usually conjure up images of subtropical beaches, sipping cocktails through a straw stuck in a coconut shell. However, the Quindío wax palm makes its home high in the mountains of the Andes, and unlike any other palms can reach incredible heights of 60 m (200 feet) or more. Read More
Many readers have commented about the photos used on this blog, so I wanted to feature a few photos that I come across that don’t quite fit into a full length article. Each week, I’ll select two photos (with creative commons licenses) from the web of the same tree, and readers can decide which photo best captures the spirit of the tree. For this inaugural edition, I’ve chosen the Sycamore Gap tree located in Northumberland, England. Read More
Trees can move from relative obscurity into history books around the world for a number of reasons. Sometimes they live longer, grow taller, or extend over a wider region than their peers. Other times, they are simply in the right place at the right time to make an impact. The Tree of Hippocrates is one such example. It bore witness to the teachings of one of the most significant minds in history. Read More
Trees are known for their longevity, and there are countless examples of trees living to 1000 years and beyond. At this age they can grow to cover acres of land, but in Southern Utah, USA, the Pando aspen tree colony breaks all records. Read More
Whether called the Chilean Pine, Monkey Puzzle, or Pehuen, the araucaria araucana is certainly a peculiar tree. Chile’s national tree is originally from high in the mountains of Patagonia, but thanks to a strange twist of fate, it’s now common in Victorian gardens throughout the UK. Read full story
The Treeographer 