World Records & Bizarre Facts

World Records
This information was found on the Northwest Missouri State University Arboretum website
and the Trees are Good website.

The Oldest Tree known is a Redwood named Eternal God. The tree, found in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in California, has a height of 238 feet and a diameter of 19.6 feet. It is believed to be 12,000 years old, but this figure is disputed; others believe the tree to be only 7,000 years old, still a world record.

The Most Massive Tree ever known was the “Lindsey Creek Tree”, a Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) with a minimum trunk volume of 90,000 cubic feet and a minimum total mass of 3630 tons. The tree blew over in a storm in 1905. The living tree with the greatest mass is “General Sherman”, a giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum, in Sequoia National Park in California. It is 275 feet tall with a girth of 102 feet and 8 inches.

The Tree Network with the Greatest Mass, a network of Quaking Aspen, (Populus tremuloides) growing from a single root system in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, covers 106 acres and weighs about 6600 tons (13,200,000 pounds). This clonal system is genetically uniform and acts as a single organism, changing color and shedding leaves in unison.

The Greatest Girth of a tree was recorded in the late 18th century on Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy. A European Chestnut (Castanea sativa) known as the Tree of the Hundred Horses, had a circumference of 190 feet. It has since separated into three parts.

The Tallest Deciduous Tree currently known in America is a Pecan in Mer Rouge, Louisiana. It stands over 160 feet tall and over 95 feet in spread.

Deepest Roots. The greatest reported depth to which a tree’s roots have penetrated is 400 feet by a Wild Fig tree at Echo Caves, near Ohrigstad, Mpumalanga, South Africa.

The Greatest Spread of a tree occurs on a Banyan tree in the Indian Botanical Gardens in Calcutta. It has 1,775 prop or support roots, a circumference of 1,350 feet, covers three acres, and dates from before 1787.

The Tallest Tree known to have existed is an Australian Eucalyptus at Watts River, Victoria in Australia. It was reported in 1872 to measure 435 feet tall, but probably measured over 500 feet at some point in its life.

The Tallest Living Tree is a Coast Redwood known as the “Mendocino Tree” found in Montgomery State Reserve, Ukiah, CA. It is about 367 feet and 6 inches tall with a 10.5 foot diameter and is over 1000 years old and still growing.

The Fastest Growing Tree is an Albizzia falcata in Sabah, Malaysia. In 1974 it was found to have grown 35 feet and 3 inches in 13 months–about 1.1 inches per day.

The Slowest Growing Tree is a White Cedar located on a cliff side in the Great Lakes area of Canada. At 155 years old, it is less than 4 inches tall.

The Most Isolated Tree known is a solitary Norwegian Spruce on Campbell Island in the Pacific. Its nearest companion is over 120 nautical miles away in the Auckland Islands.

The Most Dangerous Tree is the Manchineel Tree, Hippomane mancinella, of the Caribbean coast and the Florida Everglades. This species has ad an evil reputation since the Spanish explorers first feared it in the 16th century. The entire tree exudes an extremely poisonous and caustic sap that was once used as arrow poison. Contact to the skin causes an eruption of blisters, contact to the eye can blind a person, and one bite of the fruit causes blistering and severe pain.

Bizarre Facts

Landowning Tree. In the city of Athens, GA, one of the oldest property owners is a White Oak. The deed dates back to 1820 and says the tree owns the 64 square feet of land on which it grows in addition to owning itself. The deed was granted in the will of Col. William H. Jackson to protect the beloved oak. The original tree blew down during a storm in 1952, but the citizens of Athens planted another, grown from one of the original tree’s acorns.

Sleeping Tree. In 1927, a horticultural mission set out from Bombay to investigate reports of a tree that lay down at night and went to sleep. According to a description of the tree published in the Bombay Chronicle, it slowly inclined toward the earth after sundown, until at midnight it lay completely on the ground. Then, it began to rise slowly and, by dawn, was once again standing upright.

Trees and Science

Dendrochronology is the science of calculating a tree’s age by its rings.

Tree rings provide precise information about environmental events, including volcanic eruptions.

A mature birch tree can produce up to 1 million seeds per year.

Moon trees were grown from seeds taken to the moon by Stuart Roosa, Command Module pilot of the Apollo 14 mission of January 31, 1971. The effort included 400-500 seeds, which orbited the moon on the first few days of February 1971. NASA and the USFS wanted to see if being in space and in the moon’s orbit would cause the seeds to grow differently than other seeds.