TREE SCIENCE

• The earth is home to over 60,000 species of trees.

• We share about 50% of our DNA with trees. 

• Trees have been central to our survival, giving us food, shelter, medicine, fire, and heat for centuries.

• Trees are essential allies in our human attempt to mitigate climate change.

• The most loved of trees, the Redwoods – Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoiadendron giganteum – can live for up to 3,000 years. Their California cousins, the Bristlecone Pines, with champions that live for 5,000 years, are now in grave danger due to climate disruption. 

• Trees are social beings –“forests are wired for sentience, wisdom, and healing” writes forest ecologist Suzanne Simard.

• Within a forest, a vast interconnected network of roots and symbiotic fungi (mycorrhizae) exists underground–an unseen sea of connectivity that has been labeled as the “wood wide web”.

• Five mega-forests remain on earth and need our immediate attention and protection: the Russian Taiga (the greatest arboreal source of oxygen on earth), the North American boreal forest, and the rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo, and New Guinea.