The largest tree in the world: sequoia, baobab, banyan

What is the name of the largest tree in the world? The answer to this question, it would seem, is known even by a schoolboy - of course, it's a sequoia! These giant trees, which grow in North America near the Pacific coast, reach a height of over a hundred meters! Who, if not them, give up the palm tree? But not everything is so simple. The fact is that the question arises as to how to count. Only the height to take into account, or else the thickness and the number of cubic meters of wood, enclosed in the largest tree? And take into account only living trees, but ignore those whose dimensions were fixed in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, and then they were cut down or they were broken by a hurricane? But first things first.

The largest tree in the world in height today is the sequoia, which received its own name Hyperion, it has an "increase" of one hundred and fifteen and a half meters. It is interesting that the tree was discovered and measured only in 2006. In second place is also the sequoia "Helios" with a height of one hundred and fourteen meters sixty-nine centimeters. The lag from the leader is only slightly more than half a meter! In third place - "Icarus" is a little over a hundred and thirteen meters in height, and on the fourth - the sequoia "Giant of the Stratosphere" (one hundred and twelve meters).

It may appear that the largest tree in the world is necessarily a sequoia. No. The highest in the relatively recent past were very different trees that grew in the southern hemisphere - in Australia. In 1872, a local forester recorded the height of a giant eucalyptus growing on the area under its jurisdiction. The height of the tree was much larger than that of Hyperion: one hundred and fifty meters! And thirteen years later, another Australian eucalyptus was measured. It was slightly lower, but still significantly higher than all the current sequoias - one hundred and forty-three meters! Unfortunately, these giants did not live to this day. Most likely, they were very old trees, and they died a natural death.

Having dealt with what is the largest tree in the world in height, let's see how the situation is with coverage. Here, of course, the African baobab holds the palm tree. With a relatively small growth (up to twenty-five meters), they have a coverage of forty meters! Like flattened kegs. Baobab, of course, is the thickest tree in the world. Researcher of Africa David Livingston claimed that he witnessed how thirty people at once slept in the hollow of a baobab! Baobab is also one of the longest-living trees. The method of radiocarbon analysis found that the largest baobabs have a very respectable age - up to five thousand years! They were already several hundred years old, when the construction of the first Egyptian pyramids began.

The largest trees in the world are not necessarily the tallest or the thickest. Banyan, growing in one of the Indian national parks, against the background of other record holders has a very modest age - about two hundred and fifty years, and a relatively small height - twenty-five meters. But it is famous for being a tree that has the largest crown in the world. It covers a territory of one and a half hectares! Banyan produces from the horizontal branches the so-called "air roots". Most of them die, but those that reach the earth, start up real, "earthy" roots and begin to "fatten" quickly. After a while they are almost impossible to distinguish from the trunk. From a distance one such banyan seems to be a grove, but in reality it is just one tree with a lot of natural "spurs".