8 Things You Might Not Know About Trees

Celebrate the Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shevat – the New Year of the Trees – with these weird and wonderful tree facts

Trees have had a huge impact on human culture: from Buddha’s fig tree, to the Tree of Knowledge, to Newton’s apple tree, they’ve shaped how we see ourselves and the world around us. Trees are so familiar you might think you know everything there is to know about these leafy giants, but here are 8 facts that might surprise you.

Living fossils

Unlike other tree types, like oaks and maples that include hundreds of species, ginkgos (Ginkgo biloba) are the only surviving species in their family.

Ginkgo is a long-living tree, and the species itself is a "living fossil" — it first evolved around the same time as the dinosaurs, over 200 million years ago.

Record breakers

Trees can be really big….

And trees can be really tall…

Healing trees

Trees have been used for medicinal purposes for 1000s of years. For example, the ‘Artemisia arborescens’ takes it’s name from the Greek word "artemes", meaning ‘healthy’, representing the plant’s powerful anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. Traditionally, Italian women would prepare crucifixes made of Artemisia branches to put under the pillows of women in labor.

Quassia wood contains the most bitter-tasting flavor found in nature, and even insects won't go near it. So why would anyone want to drink an extract made from Quassia bark? It contains chemicals that soothe the stomach and increase appetite. Today, Quassia is used for organic insecticides and has also been found effective in treatments for leukemia and cancerous tumors. Quassia is native to the West Indies, where islanders once carved cups from the wood and filled them with water to create their medicinal brew.

In fact, you’ve probably even drunk it yourself in a cocktail or two – it's one of the sources for the mixer "bitters".

Knock on wood

Lots of magical and mythological creatures have been said to reside in trees. Take the Ancient Greek dryads, who were magical nymphs that lived in oak trees. Indeed, the superstition to ‘knock on wood’ comes from the old English pagan practice of knocking on wood to summon the protection of the spirits that lived within.

Tree homes

While you may be more familiar with tiny, shoddily built tree houses made for children in your garden, people have actually lived in large and complex tree houses for centuries. Most trace tree houses to the South Pacific, where they offered secure homes above floods and wild animals, as well as offering good visibility of the surrounding area. Take this Koiari Village, in New Guinea, photographed by John William Lindt in 1885.

One small step for seed, one giant leap for tree-kind

On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 left Earth on the third NASA trip to the moon, carrying astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell.

Roosa was a former U.S. Forest Service worker, and took hundreds of tree seeds with him into space.

While Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the moon and even played golf on the lunar surface, Roosa orbited above in a command module and germinated his tiny seeds. On landing back on Earth, these seedlings were planted across the United States, known as the "Moon Trees".