About Trees and Wood

An oak with a 37 cm trunk diameter has about 119,000 leaves while a pine with a trunk of 60-70 cm in diameter has 30-40 million needle leaves.

An oak eliminates in a warm summer through its leaves about 10 tonnes of water. There is only one place in the world, at the north of the Panama Channel, where trees with a square trunk can be found. They belong to the genus Quararibea and are related to baobabs.

The bamboo is the plant with the fastest growth rhythm: 2-3 cm per hour. In 5-6 weeks, a bamboo reaches the height of 18-20 m (60-66 ft).

The lightest wood in the world is that of a Cuban tree. A cubic meter of this wood weighs just 44 kg (98 pound).

Olea laurifolia (Black Ironwood) is a species from the olive family Oleaceae native to KwaZulu-Natal Province (South Africa). The Guinness Book of World Records lists this tree as the world's heaviest wood, with a specific gravity of 1.49. The timber has a high abrasion resistance and is very strong, being an excellent turnery wood employed for a wide range of decorative items.

World's tallest trees are the coast redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens). An individual measured in 2006 in Redwood National Park (Northern California) was 379.1 feet (126.4 m) tall. Some eucalyptus go close. An Eucalyptus regnant was 346 feet (115 m) tall. Eucalyptus also have a very rapid growth.

Dragon trees encountered growing in many tropical islands are called so because the bark secretes a red latex believed in other times to be dragon blood.

The name Brazil comes from pau-brasil (Caesalpinia echinata), meaning "amber wood"in Portuguese, native to the northeastern coasts of Brazil. A red dye was extracted from this wood. The national tree of Venezuela is araguaney (Tabebuia chrysantha), up to 10 m (33ft) tall, whose yellow flowers, which can be admired from March to May, resemble the yellow of the Venezuelan national flag.

The proven most long lived trees are two pine species from the mountains of southwestern USA (Utah, Nevada, Eastern California, Colorado, Northern New Mexico, Arizona): Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) (photo) and Rocky Mountains Bristlecone Pine (Pinus arista). The oldest individual of Pinus longaeva was found to have 4,900 years!

There are 350 species of willows and poplars (at least 35 poplar species). Poplar wood, even if extremely soft, is used for plywood, veneer, making boxes, carton and other paper products.

In winter, in temperate or cold climate, trees must survive temperatures under 0°C. The cooling of the tissue occurs gradually till -10°C after which it rather goes upward, no matter how much does the external temperature drops. It seems that a part of the tree's water crystallizes further, releasing the heat amount for the warming of the tree. Many trees stand -19° C. Certain chemicals produced by the trees could impede the denaturation of the tree's proteins at very low temperatures.