The life of trees

When I was a child I read a science fiction story that made me think about trees in a new way. In the story, visitors from an advanced civilisation come to our planet and their spaceship lands in the middle of a forest. The aliens have a long conversation with the trees of the forest and then leave again, happy to think that the inhabitants of Earth are noble, intelligent and peaceful. Trees have always fascinated people. They are the biggest living things on our planet and one of the most beautiful. Trees appear in many religions and have inspired artists for thousands of years.

The oldest trees
Trees are also the oldest living organisms on earth. They are a direct link with thousands of years of history. The great age of trees makes them useful for all sorts of scientific research. The rings inside a tree are particularly useful to tell scientists about changes in the climate that happened many thousands of years ago, before written records were kept.

The oldest living organism on earth is a bristlecone pine tree which grows in the USA. It is about 4,700 years old – which means that it was growing when the Egyptians built the Pyramids.

Sri Maha Bodhi is a banyan tree growing in Sri Lanka. It is the oldest tree in the world that has a recorded history – of more than 23 centuries. It is worshipped by more than 2,100 people daily because it is believed to be a sapling from the original tree that Buddha sheltered under in India over 2,500 years ago.

The gingko tree is one of the oldest species of tree still living today. We know that it was living 160 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth. Watch out for it if you see a dinosaur film like Jurassic Park! But gingko fossils disappeared about seven million years ago. Scientists thought that it was extinct until it was discovered in Japan in 1691. Buddhist monks had continued to cultivate the tree. Today it is popular in parks and gardens and is widely used in natural med