1. Teapot Baobab, Madagascar
Teapot
Baobab takes the form of bottle and also looks like teapot, which is
why its name has teapot in it. This tree and the trees similar like this
are located in Ifaty, Madagascar.
The famed Teapot Baobab is around 1200 years old and has the capacity of storing more than 31,000 US gallons (117.000 litres) of water. It can show the endurance for severe drought conditions. [link]
The Chandelier Tree in Drive Thru Tree Park is a 315 foot (96 metre) tall coast redwood tree in Leggett, California with a 6 ft (1.83 m) wide by 6 ft 9 inch (2.06 m) high hole cut through its base to allow a car to drive through.
The Chandelier Tree
is a giant redwood located 175 mi (280 km) north of San Francisco on US
101. The massive tree had the ignoble fate of having a tunnel carved
through its base more than 60 years ago and is now the centerpiece of a
200-acre grove of redwoods.
For $3, you can drive your car through the tree - unless you are driving a Winnebago (a type of recreational vehicle) - and set up a picnic at its base. [link1, link2, map]
3. Boab Prison Tree, Australia
The Boab Prison Tree is a large hollow Adansonia gregorii (Boab) tree just south of Derby, Western Australia.
It is reputed to have been used in the 1890s as a lockup for Indigenous
Australian prisoners on their way to Derby for sentencing.
It is now a tourist attraction. In recent years a fence was erected around the tree to protect it from vandalism. [link, map]
4. Cotton Tree, Sierra Leone
The Cotton Tree is a Ceiba pentandra (tropical tree), a historic symbol of Freetown,
the capital city of Sierra Leone. According to legend, the "Cotton
Tree" gained importance in 1792 when a group of former African American
slaves, who had gained their freedom by fighting for the British during
the American War of Independence, settled the site of modern Freetown.
According to tradition,
they landed on the shoreline and walked up to a giant tree just above
the bay and held a thanksgiving service there, gathering around the tree
in a large group and praying and singing hymns to thank God for their
deliverance to a free land.
Today, a huge Cotton
Tree stands in the oldest part of Freetown near the Supreme Court
building, music club building and the National Museum. Sierra Leonians
believe that this very tree was where the Nova Scotian settlers prayed
more than two hundreds years ago, and they regard it as the symbol of their capital city. Its exact age is unknown, but it is known to have existed in 1787. [link, map]
5. Lone Cypress Tree, USA
Chief among the scenic attractions at 17-Mile Drive (California)
is the Lone Cypress Tree, a salt-pruned Monterey cypress (macrocarpa)
tree which is the official symbol of Pebble Beach and a frequent fixture
of television broadcasts from this area.
In 1990 the Monterey
Journal reported that Pebble Beach's lawyer, Kerry C. Smith, said "The
image of the tree has been trademarked by us," and that it intended to
control any display of the cypress for commercial purposes. The company
had warned photographers that "they cannot even use existing pictures of
the tree for commercial purposes."
Other legal commentators
have questioned the Pebble Beach Company's ability to invoke
intellectual property laws to restrict others' use of such images. [link, map]
....
6. Chêne Chapelle, France
The Chêne chapelle (Oak Chapel) is an oak tree located in Allouville-Bellefosse in Seine-Maritime,
France. The oak tree is between 800 and 1,200 years old. It is 15m
(50ft) high and its base has a circumference of 16m (53 ft).
A staircase spirals
around its twisted trunk but neither is this an everyday tree house.
Instead of a dwelling place atop or amongst its branches the visitor
will discover that the interior holds the secret of this ancient oak.
Within there are two
small chapels, which were built there in 1669. How old the tree is
exactly is the subject of some debate but it is without doubt the oldest
known tree in France. While it has persevered the centuries, others have come and gone but Chêne chapelle has remained.
Today the common oak is
showing signs of age and stress. Now held up by poles, part of the
33-foot (10 m) trunk has died and the majority of the tree has been
covered over with wooden shingles where the bark has fallen away. [link1, link2, map]
7. Sunland Baobab, South Africa
Sunland Baobab is a well-known enormous baobab (Adansonia digitata) in South Africa. The tree is located on Sunland Farm
(Platland Farm), near Modjadjiskloof (previously known as
Duiwelskloof), Limpopo Province. The Sunland Big Baobab is renowned
because in its hollowed trunk there is established a bar and a wine
cellar.
The tree has been carbon dated and is estimated to be around 1060 years old.
The trunk of the tree
consists of two connected parts. Each of these parts has its own
enormous hollow connected with a narrow passage.
 |
| The narrow entrance to the bar link |
Diameter of the tree -
10.64 metres or 35 ft (only Glencoe Baobab up to recent split had larger
diameter), height 19 metres (62 ft) and crown diameter - 30.2 metres
(99 ft). Circumference of the trunk - 33.4 metres (110 ft).
Carbon investigations
inside the hollows of the tree testify that there have been fires in the
hollow in 1650 AD, 1750–1780, 1900, 1955 and 1990. Hollows have been
turned into pub in 1993 by the owners of Sunland farm and this unusual
landmark since then has turned into popular tourist destination. [link, map]
8. Bartek, Poland
Bartek is an ancient oak tree in Poland. It grows in Zagnańsk near Kielce
in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains. Its age, previously estimated at up to
1200 years, has recently been established to be 650–670 years, with a
corer used to extract a sample for a ring count. An accurate count is
impossible, as Bartek's interior has hollowed with age. There are
several older trees in Poland, both oaks and yews (some over 1000 years
old), yet none of them has matched Bartek's fame.
The 30-metre (98 ft)
tall Bartek measures 13.5 metres (44 ft) in girth at its base. Its crown
spreads about 40 metres (131 ft). King Casimir III (1310–1370) is known
to have held court under Bartek. King Jan III Sobieski rested under the
oak on his way back from the Battle of Vienna (1683). He reputedly hid a
Turkish sabre, an arquebus and a bottle of wine inside it to
commemorate the victory.
 |
| Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on an official visit to Bartek link |
The oak is still alive,
but is in decline. In 1829 it had 14 main branches, today only 8 are
left. In the 1920s the hollow inside the trunk was covered with
limestone. The limestone was removed in the 1960s, replaced with
resin-based filling and covered with bark. The living sapwood is very
thin (5–20 cm or 2-8 inches). The weakened trunk has begun to lean
toward the heavy branches. [link, map]
9. Basket Tree, USA
This is the famous "Basket Tree" authored by Axel Erlandson (1884-1964),
well-known Swedish American farmer, who shaped trees as a hobby, and
opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 advertised as "See the World's
Strangest Trees Here," and named "The Tree Circus." Basket tree and
all the other masterpieces of Axel Erlandson is located in Gilroy
Gardens - a garden-themed family theme park in Gilroy, California.
To create the "Basket
Tree", Erlandson planted six sycamore trees in a circle, topped them all
at one foot, then approach-grafted them together one to another to form
the diamond patterns. For the first 2.5 meters (8') he left an opening
at the top. This specimen today is featured as the centerpiece of Gilroy Gardens. [link, map]
10. Árbol del Tule, Mexico
El Árbol del Tule (Spanish for The Tree of Tule) is a tree located in the church grounds in the town center of Santa María del Tule in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) east of the city of Oaxaca on the road to Mitla. In 2001 it was placed on a UNESCO tentative list of World Heritage Sites.
It is a Montezuma
cypress (Taxodium mucronatum), or ahuehuete (meaning "old man of the
water" in the local language). It has the stoutest trunk of any tree in
the world. In
2005, its trunk had a circumference of 36.2 m (119 ft), equating to a
diameter of 11.62 m (38.1 ft), a slight increase from a measurement of
11.42 m (37.5 ft) m in 1982.
The tree is occasionally nicknamed the "Tree of Life" from all the images of animals
that are reputedly visible in the tree's gnarled trunk. As part of an
official project local schoolchildren give tourists a tour of the tree
and show all manners of creatures that the trunk features, including
jaguars and elephants. [link, map]
11. The Great Banyan, India
The Great Banyan is a banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) located in Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Howrah, near Kolkata,
India. It was the widest tree in the world in terms of the area of the
canopy and is estimated to be about 200 to 250 years old.
It became diseased after
it was struck by lightning, so in 1925 the middle of the tree was
excised to keep the remainder healthy; this has left it as a clonal
colony, rather than a single tree. A 330 metre (1,080ft) long road was
built around its circumference, but the tree continues to spread beyond
it.
The Great Banyan tree
is over 250 years old and in spread it is the largest known in India,
perhaps in Asia. There is no clear history of the tree, but it is
mentioned in some travel books of the nineteenth century. It was damaged
by two great cyclones in 1884 and 1886, when some of its main branches
were broken and exposed to the attack of a hard fungus. With its large
number of aerial roots, The Great Banyan looks more like a forest than
an individual tree.
The tree now lives
without its main trunk, which decayed and was removed in 1925. The
circumference of the original trunk was 1.7 m (5.6ft) and from the
ground was 15.7 m (51.5ft). The area occupied by the tree is about 14500
square metres (about 1.5 hectares or 4 acres). The present crown of the
tree has a circumference of about 1 kilometre (0.6mi) and the highest
branch rises to about 25 m (82ft); it has at present 3300 aerial roots
reaching down to the ground. [link, map]
12. Angel Oak, USA
This famous tree is a Southern live oak (Quercus virginiana) located in Angel Oak Park on Johns Island near Charleston, South Carolina.
The Angel Oak Tree is
estimated to be in excess of 500 years old, stands 66.5 ft (20 m) tall,
measures 28 ft (8.5 m) in circumference, and produces shade that covers
17,200 square feet (1,600 m2). From tip to tip Its longest branch
distance is 187 ft (57 m).
The Angel Oak
was damaged severely during Hurricane Hugo in 1989 but has since
recovered. The City of Charleston has owned the tree and surrounding
park since 1991. This tree is one of the most visited oaks in the United
States.
Recently, a plan for
apartment development nearby the Angel Tree has been scrutinized and
fought against by the S.C. Coastal Conservation League. They argue that
the development would alter the groundwater flow to the tree and clear
the nearby forests whose root systems are intimately related with the
Angel Tree. [link1, link2, map]
13. Dragon Tree at Icod, Spain
In Icod (a municipality on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands),
close to the Church of San Marcos, stands a famous dragon tree (22 m or
72 ft high, lower trunk diameter 10 m or 33 ft, estimated weight 70 t),
which is reputed to be a thousand years old. While no study seems to
have confirmed such longevity for the tree (dracos do not produce annual
rings with which to tell their ages; the tree is more likely to have an
age in the hundreds of year), it is the long-time symbol of Icod.
After an abortive attempt by the city council in 2002, another bid to
list the Icod Dragon Tree as a UNESCO World Heritage Site was made in
2011. [link]
14. Gloucester Tree, Australia
The Gloucester Tree is a giant karri tree (Eucalyptus) in the Gloucester National Park of Western Australia.
At 72 metres (236 ft) in height, it is the world's second tallest
fire-lookout tree, and visitors can climb up to a platform in its upper
branches for a spectacular view of the surrounding karri forest.
Built in 1947, the Gloucester Tree
was one of eight karri trees that between 1937 and 1952 were made
relatively easy to climb so that they could be used as fire lookout
spots. The suitability of the tree as a fire lookout was tested by
forester Jack Watson, who climbed the tree using climbing boots and a
belt. Another forester, George Reynolds, pegged the ladder and lopped
branches to facilitate climbing the tree, and a wooden lookout cabin was
built 58 metres (190 ft) above the ground. The Governor-General of
Australia, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, visited the site during
construction, and the tree and national park are named in his honour.
 |
| View from lookout cabin link |
The wooden lookout cabin
was demolished in 1973 for safety reasons, and was replaced with a
steel and aluminium cabin and visitors' gallery. Currently the climb is
done by stepping on 153 spikes that spiral the tree. Only
20 percent of visitors climb to the top of the tree; most make it only
part of the way before turning back. [link, map]
15. Ying Ke Pine, China
Welcoming Guest Pine (The Ying Ke Pine)
is located on the east side of Jade Screen Peak, by Wenshu Cave. It's
about 10 meters (33 feet) high. The diameter of its trunk is 64cm (25
inches), and the diameter of its roots is 75 meters (246 feet). Half way
up the trunk, two main lateral branchess, which are 7.6 meters (25
feet) long, stretch forwards. It looks like a hospitable host who flings
his arms out to warmly welcome guests from China and abroad.
This pine is the
representative example of Huangshan's pines, and seems to act as an
ambassador for the Yellow Mountains. Being the most photographed thing in Huangshan,
its image appears as decoration in restaurants and homes all over
China. It's a treasure of China. A huge iron relief of Welcoming Guest
Pine is exhibited in Anhui Hall in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. [link, map]
