37 Wonderful and Fun Facts About Trees You Won’t Believe

A formation of larch trees in the shape of a swastika was discovered in Germany in 1992. The formation, only visible in the fall, went unnoticed for 60 years. After that discovery, other forest swastikas were found in Germany and beyond.

2. Albino redwood trees cannot produce chlorophyll. However, they can still survive because they fuse their roots with the roots of other redwood trees and live as parasites.

3. Mangrove trees thrive in saltwater. They filter out about 99% of the salt with their roots and are literally desalination plants.

4. Artificial Christmas trees were invented by a British toilet brush company in the 1930s. The company used the same machinery and bristles to make the trees as they used to make their toilet brushes.

5. Scientists have successfully genetically engineered American chestnut trees to resist the blight that annihilated them, bringing back a species from functional extinction.

For at least several hundred years, people have been practicing the art of grow trees and their roots into bridges, chairs, “people trees”, ladders, fences, jungle gyms, tunnels, etc. It’s known as “Tree Shaping.” Theoretically, it can even be used to grow homes.

7. A poisonous tree and its antidote often grow so close together that their roots intertwine. The Chemchem tree excretes a poisonous black sap that raises a blistering rash on the skin while its counterpart, the Chaka tree, offers chemical compounds that can counteract the rash.

8. Severing the limb of a Bloodwood tree triggers the same type of response you'd see if you severed a human limb. The damage causes the release of a deep crimson sap that looks alarmingly like human blood. Its sole purpose is to coagulate and seal wounds, but has many other medical uses as well.

9. A 5064-year-old pine tree in California is the oldest known individual living tree in the world. Its exact location is kept secret. It was alive while Stonehenge was under construction and around the time that humans first developed writing system.

10. A Norway Spruce in Sweden named Old Tjikko is approximately 9550 years old. However, it is not the oldest individual living tree because it has regenerated new trunks, branches and roots over millennia rather than being an individual tree of great age.

Older bigger trees share nutrients with smaller trees, which later repay them back when they have developed.

12. Pine trees scatter their needles across the forest floor to make it easier for fires to burn all of the other trees. Pine is fire resistant so it survives.

13. During Hiroshima, the Gingko trees that were growing 1 to 2 km from the explosion of the atomic bomb survived the blast and quickly became healthy again. Those trees were some of the few living things that survived and are still alive today.

14. Aluminum Christmas trees dropped in popularity after their negative portrayal in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

15. Yew trees can live to more than 1000 years, are often found in graveyards, and have long been associated with death. They're deadly poisonous to humans, with no known antidote. However, the tree is used to make taxanes, which are used to fight cancer.

The Rainbow Eucalyptus trees in Hawaii have natural rainbow-colored bark.

17. To stop the theft of trees in public parks near Christmas time, some cities spray would-be Christmas trees with fox urine. It freezes and is odorless outdoors, but would be unbearable and irremovable if taken into someone's home.

18. The wood of tabebuia trees is more dense than water and naturally shares the same fire resistance rating as industrial steel.

19. Trees actually sleep at night, relaxing their branches after dawn and perking them up before sunrise.

20. Bonsai trees have to be planted off center because the center symbolizes where heaven and earth meet and therefore should be left unoccupied.

There is a palm tree and pine tree planted next to each other at the midpoint of California. The palm tree signifies the entrance to Southern California, while the pine tree signifies the entrance to Northern California.

22. An average tree is made up of 99% dead cells, only around 1% is alive at any time, consisting of the leaves, root tips, and phloem a thin layer of under bark that acts as a food delivery system.

23. The Giant Redwood Tree is so tall that in order to get water near the top of the tree, it uses "air roots" to collect water out of the fog.

24. In 2012, the 5th oldest tree in the world was destroyed when a 26- year-old model named Sarah Barnes started fire to see better while smoking meth inside its hollow trunk. She was turned in by her friends when she showed them pictures of the fire and telling them “I can’t believe I burned down a tree older than Jesus.”

25. There is a species of palm tree (Windmill Palm) that can survive as far north as Canada.