Friday tree fact: the courthouse tower groves of Greensburg The town of Greensburg, Indiana, is known as the “Tree City” for the over-a-dozen trees that have been growing out of the roof of the Decatur County Courthouse serially for 145 years. (They're believed to have sprouted from seeds in bird droppings.) In 1870, the citizens of Greensburg began [...]
Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario show that plants are capable of recognizing their siblings and will give them preferential treatment, competing less for valuable resources like root space than they otherwise would when surrounded by plants that are "strangers". photo Flickr intherough "Our view of nature is sometimes [...]
Seen from a distance, you'd be justified in thinking the Great Banyan Tree in the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden is a small, independent forest. Yet step into its shade and see the connection of branches - and you realize: wait, this is all one big, big..... BIG tree. from Atlas Obscura: The Great Banyan [...]
page from Da Vinci's notebook 500 years ago, Leonardo Da Vinci observed a simple fact that nobody had apparently ever noticed before: that "all branches of a tree … put together are equal in thickness to its trunk." In other words, if a tree’s branches were folded upward and squeezed together, the [...]
ArborScape Friday Funfact! The Moon Trees In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa took 500 seeds aboard Apollo 14 as part of his personal luggage. In his earlier life, Roosa worked for the Forest Service in the early 1950's as a smoke jumper fighting fires and later joined the Air Force and became a test pilot. The [...]