Wood & Facts, Facts About Wood & Trees Part 1

For several years, I have complied facts on wood and trees. Here are 79 that I will share with you. There are 40 on this page and 39 on Facts About Wood & Trees 2. I add to and update it frequently. Some are pretty astounding.

* The oldest workable wood/lumber on earth is Ancient Kauri {Agathis australis}. The trees from ancient forests on North Island, New Zealand have been buried under peat moss since the last ice age. They are well preserved and are now being dug up from the tundra. They have been radio carbon dated to approximately 30,000 - 50,000 years old. Of coarse, 50,000 years is the ultimate limit of radio carbon dating so it is quite possible that these trees could be older!

It is estimated that the trees were growing approximately 12 - 20 centuries before they were buried by the ice. Some of the trees have a circumference of approximately 40 foot and heights of almost 200 foot. The Ancient Kauri trees are native to New Zealand and are not found anywhere else in the world. The wood/lumber from these trees can be purchased from, Ancientwood, LTD. Each piece of Ancient Kauri wood/lumber purchased, comes with a Certificate Of Authenticity.

* It is not uncommon for a Pohutukaw, New Zealand Christmas tree {Metrosiderosis excelsa} to have multiple trunks. An ancient Pohutukaw named Te Waha O Rerekohu, is growing on the grounds of the Te Waha O Rerekohu School in Te Araroa that has 22 trunks! It is approximately 65 foot tall and is over 600 years old.

* Balsa {Ochroma pyramidale} is the lightest and softest commercially sold wood in the world. It's average specific gravity averages .16. Note: There are 4 other woods that are lighter, but none of them are suitable for any purpose. They are extremely weak and are not actually anything like wood as far as looks, feel and texture.

* The world's largest, recorded harvested burl was a Redwood {Sequoia sempervirens}, located near Big Lagoon in Humboldt County, California in 1944. It was approximately 105 foot in circumference {over 33 foot in diameter}, nine feet tall at the crown and weighed 60 tons. Seven redwoods up to six foot in diameter were growing out of it. It took four men about a month to harvest and make it into veneer stock.

* Not all species of wood floats in water. In order to sink in water the specific gravity of the wood, has to be 1.00 or more. The 27 below sink.

* Not all wood that comes from hardwood {flowering} broadleaf trees is hard and wood that comes from softwood {conifers} cone-bearing trees is soft. There are exceptions to this. For instance Balsa {Ochroma pyramidale} and Basswood {Tilia americana} are hardwoods even though they are extremely soft. The southern pines {Pinus strobus} are softwoods but are moderately hard and much harder than Balsa or Basswood.

* Osage Orange {Maclura pomifera} is the species of wood that produces the most heat when burned, approximately 33 million BTU's per 20% air dried moisture content cord. A cord of wood is 4 foot wide x 4 foot high x 8 foot long {128 cubic foot} and has on average 80 cubic foot of burnable wood, the rest is just air space.

* The most recently discovered tree specie is the Wollemi Pine, {Wollemia nobilis}. It was discovered in September 1994, by, a New South Wales National Parks officer named David Noble in a secluded area in the Blue Mountains of the Wollemi National Park, approximately 124 miles west of Sydney Australia. The total count of the wild mature trees is fewer than a hundred. The largest one is a little over 131 foot tall and a little short of 4 foot in diameter. The species is from the Araucariaceae family of conifers which are around 200 million years old, one of the oldest on earth.

In October of 2005, 292 five year old, 6 foot 6 inch to almost 10 foot tall cultivated Wollemi Pine trees from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney Australia, were auctioned off by Sotheby's Auction House, selling from $2000 - $7000 each, with one bidder paying $115,000 for a set of trees. The auction took in $1.17 million.

Sometime in the spring of 2006, Wollemi Pine trees ranging in height from 16 inches to a little under 5 foot will be available to the general public at reasonable prices through retail outlets.

* White Oak {Quercus alba} is the species of wood that is easiest to steam bend. With thin stock {1/8 inch or thinner} you can bend it, into an extremely small {tight} radius.

* The name Ironwood is actually a slang term given to the hardest wood of an area, region or country. There are over 80 species of wood in the world, referred to or having the word Ironwood in them.

* The heaviest and the hardest wood in the world is Snakewood {Piratinera guianensis}. It's specific gravity averages 1.30.

* The tree with the world's greatest recorded root depth is a Wild Fig {Ficus natalensis}, located at Echo Caves, close to the town of Ohrigstad, Transvaal, located in South Africa. One of its roots goes down 393 foot 8 3/8 inches.

* The Ombu {Phytolacca dioica} tree, looks like a tree but is actually not a tree specie, it is a bush. It grows in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. The Ombu can live with very little water, can survive violent storms, insect attacks and intense heat. Its wood is so moist it will not burn and so spongy the tree can be cut down with a knife. Its trunk can have a diameter of 16 foot and the total overall height can reach 60 foot.

* Palm Sunday was named after the Palm tree {Phoenix dactylifera} because people took branches of Palm trees with them to greet Jesus Christ in Jerusalem {John 12:13}.

* The world's tallest natural uncut and living Christmas tree is 276 foot. It is a Eucalyptus {Eucalyptus regnansis} located in the Styx Valley, a tract of ancient forest in Tasmania, Australia.

To date, the world's tallest cut down and decorated Christmas tree was a Fir of 215 foot. It was used to celebrate the Christmas of 1950 in the city of Seattle Washington.

* The world's shortest tree specie is the Dwarf {Least} Willow {Salix herbacea}. It is rare to find one more than 2 1/2 inches tall. They are also dioecious, producing both male, yellow colored and female, red colored catkins. They have been found growing on frozen tundra in the Arctic.

* The tree specie with the thickest bark is the Redwood {Sequoia gigantean}, its bark can be up to 24 inches thick.

* The tree specie with the thickest bark other than a Redwood {Sequoia gigantea}, is the Coast Douglas Fir tree {Pseudotsuga menziesii}. On the older trees, the bark can be 8 - 12 inches thick.

* The tree specie that produces the largest cones is the Sugar Pine {Pinus lambertiana}, ranging in size from 12 to 24 inches in length and 4 to 5 inches in diameter.

* Lignin is the substance found in wood that helps determine how hard the wood will be. The more Lignin present, the harder the wood and vice versa, the less present, the softer the wood.

* The bark of the Cork Oak {Quercus suber} is used to produce cork wine stoppers). The species grows in Northwest Africa and Southwest Europe with Algeria, Morocco, Portugal and Spain, manufacturing the majority of the world's supply.

* Up until a few years ago, the world's oldest living tree, a Bristlecone Pine {Pinus longaeva}, named the Methuselah was located in the Great Basin National Park, California. It is approximately 4,844 years old. It is also the tallest living {55 foot} Bristlecone Pine. Now there may be at least two trees that are older!

With John White's refined measurement techniques of today {see below}, The Lime {Tilia cordata}, in the Silkwood at Westonbirt Arboretum (Near Tetbury, Gloucester, U.K.) is probably around 6000 years old.

The Fortingall Yew {Taxus baccata}, in Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Scotland, might be as much as 9000 years old. The usual way of calculating a trees age by counting the annual rings in the trunk or by carbon dating, are not accurate when it comes to Yews because a Yews trunk tends to hollow with age, while it continues to grow by rooting its branches and wrapping them around itself. There is even documentation of the formation of aerial roots growing inside the hollow trunk. Another reason are Yews have been known to stop growing for long periods of time, {documented 325 years}, thus having no growth rings for that period.

John White's method of estimating a tree's age is by measuring its trunk circumference approximately 5 feet from ground level. He had access to and studied more than 100,000 tree measurements and multitudes of growth ring patterns from broken or cutoff stumps and concluded that growth rings are closer together on the outside portion of the stump. His technique shows that trees grow at different rates in the three phases of their lifetime, Formative, Middle Age and Senescence (Old Age}. With the evidence he has complied, tables of expected growth, relative to trunk size have been made for numerous common trees.

* There are two types of trees that it is impossible to tell how old they are by counting their growth rings. Trees produce growth rings because of the distinguishable temperature changes that occur over a yearly cycle causing their growth to slow down and speed up.

Trees in certain tropical regions that have a consistent year round climate where growth is ongoing do not form pronounced growth rings. Trees that are endogenous, the majorities of which is some specie of Palm tree {Arecaceae, Palmae or Palm Family), which grow by adding new material inwards, do not produce growth rings.

* In 1964, after his coring tool broke and getting permission from the U.S. Forest Service, a research scientist to get an accurate age measurement cut down a Bristlecone Pine {Pinus longaeva}, in Great Basin National Park, since named Prometheus! It turned out the tree was over 4,950 years old making it older than the Bristlecone Pine named Methuselah, which at the time was 4,803 years old. He had not only found the oldest living thing on the planet, but he had also killed it. A cross-section of the tree is on view at the Great Basin National Parks, visitor center in California.

* The world's largest divided tree leaf to date was growing on a West African Raphia Palm {Raphia vinifera}. When measured, it was approximately 82 foot in length. Note: Only a very small percentage of tree species in the world have divided leaves.

* The tree specie with the largest undivided leaves is the Bigleaf Magnolia {Magnolia macrophylla}. The leaves are 7 to 12 inches wide and 12 to 32 inches long.

* In an article written in 2004 and featured in the weekly magazine Nature, it states that theoretically, the tallest possible height that any tree could obtain is 400-425 foot. This is because of gravity and the friction between water and the vessels of the tree through which it flows.

* In 1872, trained forester William Ferguson, reported a fallen Eucalyptus Tree (Eucalyptus regnans), which was 18 feet in diameter and 435 feet long thus making it the tallest (or longest) tree ever found.

* The world's tallest living standing tree, a Redwood {Sequoia gigantea}, is in Humboldt State Redwood Park California. Last measured in 2005, it was 370 foot 2 inches {37 stories} tall, or approximately 5 stories higher than the Statue of Liberty.

* The world's tallest living standing tree, other than a Redwood {Sequoia gigantea}, is a 329 foot high Douglas Fir {Pseudotsuga taxifolia}, in Coos Bay, Oregon. It would make more than 60,000 board feet of lumber.

* The tree with the widest tree trunk in the world is the Santa Maria del Tule, an Montezuma Cypress {Taxodium mucronatum}, in Santa Maria del Tule, Oaxaca, Mexico. The town is named after the tree. It is approximately 37 foot 6 inches in diameter {wide}, approximately 141 foot tall and over 2000 years old.

Because the trunk of the tree is not circular in shape but in reality has an distorted and irregular shape, you can't multiply the diameter by approximately 3.14 {pi} and come up with its true approximate circumference {girth}.

It was thought that the trunks of the tree were several different individual trees that had merged together. A test of DNA samples taken from the trunks of the tree in 1996 using the technique Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA indicated that the trunks came from a single tree.

* At one time, in the late 18th century the world's greatest recorded tree circumference {girth} was a European Chestnut {Castanea sativa) known as the Tree Of The Hundred Horses, located on Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy. At that time it had a circumference {girth} of almost 190 foot. Since then, it has separated into three parts {trees}.

* The world's slowest growing tree is a White Cedar {Thuja occidentalis}, located in Canada. After 155 years, it grew to a height of 4 inches and weighed only 6/10th of an ounce. The tree can be found on a cliffside in the Canadian Great Lakes area.

* The world's largest forest is in northern Russia. It is located between 55 degrees North Latitude and the Arctic Circle {Siberia}. It is a coniferous forest. It covers a total area of 2.7 billion acres.

* The world's fastest growing specie of tree, is the Empress {Paulownia spp.}. This tree can grow up to 20 feet the first year and some have been documented growing 12 inches in 21 days!

* The world's fastest recorded growth of a tree was an Albasia {Albizzia falcate} located in Sabah, Malaysia in the year 1974. It grew, 35 foot 3 inches in approximately 13 months. That would be averaging about 1 1/10 inch per day.

* The tree with the world's largest canopy/crown {spread of its branches} is the great Banyan {Ficus bengalensis}, in the Indian Botanical Garden, Calcutta, India. It has over 1,700 prop supporting roots and dates back to 1787. The canopy/crown has a circumference of 1,350 foot, approximately 430 foot wide, almost 1 1/2 football fields.