8. CHESTNUT OF 100 HORSES

One of the youngest of these ancient trees is the 'General Sherman', a Giant Sequoia that stands 275ft tall and measures 102ft in circumference at the base. It can be found in the Sequoia National Park. As of 2002, the trunk volume was measured at about 1487 cubic meters, and has been identified as the largest tree in the world by wood-volume. It is believed to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old.

9. THE GENERAL SHERMAN

Finally we come to the real youngster of the group, though to be honest that cannot be stated with certainty because the centre of the trunk is too rotten to get a true tree-ring picture. The Jhomon Sugi tree, of Yakushima in Japan, could be as young as 2,170 years or as old as 7,200, which would make it the oldest by far. With a girth of 16.4m, it has certainly been around for a VERY long time.

10 THE JHOMON SUGI TREE

We cannot know how many more millennia may pass before these incredible organisms finally reach the end of their lives, but it helps to underline how unimportant we humans really are in the overall scheme of things. In the sense of geological time, we have only just drawn our first breath. Thousands of years to live your life. Wouldn't that be something?

上一页  [1] [2]