Conservation / Tree Health

By Gabriel Popkin

Some 5400 years ago, about the time humans were inventing writing, an alerce tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) may have started to grow here in the coastal mountains of present-day Chile. Sheltered in a cool, damp ravine, it avoided fires and logging that claimed many others of its kind, and it grew into a grizzled giant more than 4 meters across. Much of the trunk died, part of the crown fell away, and the tree became festooned with mosses, lichens, and even other trees that took root in its crevices.

By Laura Chung

Hidden away on the southern side of an ancient volcano in northern NSW is a unique rainforest that will house 20 rare seedlings of a tree, but whether they will survive as climate change takes hold is in the hands of scientists.

By Helen Briggs

Planting more trees is one of a combination of solutions to combating climate change, but some trees are far better than others. Which ones though? ​​Scientists have designed an experimental forest in England to work out the best formula for achieving ambitious tree planting targets.

By W. John Kress, Gary A. Krupnick

By Alexandra Martins

They are descended from ancestors that lived more than 50 million years ago and have faced all kinds of challenges.

But today they are still standing, but only in one place on the planet.

In the Sierra La Laguna, in the state of Baja California Sur, in northwestern Mexico, lives the only population of a species of oak known as encino arroyero .

By: Stephanie Pappas

Ancient trees, the venerable sentinels of forests, may preserve genetic diversity that helps woodlands thrive for thousands of years, a new study suggests. 

A new study involving more than 100 scientists from across the globe and the largest forest database yet assembled estimates that there are about 73,000 tree species on Earth, including about 9,200 species yet to be discovered.

The global estimate is about 14% higher than the current number of known tree species. Most of the undiscovered species are likely to be rare, with very low populations and limited spatial distribution, the study shows.

By Patrick Greenfield

There was perhaps no one better than Cornelius H. Muller—one of twentieth-century America’s most notable oak fanatics—to document the continent’s most mysterious oak trees. In July 1932, the horseback-riding botanist first encountered Quercus tardifolia while collecting samples in the steep-cut canyons of Texas’s Big Bend National Park. Muller jotted down details of the twigs (slender, somewhat fluted), buds (hairy at the tip), leaves (dull blue-green), and branches (short, stiff). He anointed it with a Latin name that referenced the tree’s late-season leaf development.

Schwenda, Germany—Last summer, Friederike and Jörg von Beyme stood on a bramble-covered, Sun-blasted slope outside this small town in eastern Germany. Just 4 years ago, the hillside, part of a nearly 500-hectare forest the couple bought in 2002, was green and shady, covered in tall, neatly arranged Norway spruce trees the couple planned to cut and sell.