trees

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Ancient Tree Has 'Surprise' Sex Change

The Fortingall Yew suddenly sprouts berries

(Newser) - One of Europe's oldest surviving organisms is having a "sex change"—and growing pretty red berries to boot. A yew tree in Scotland that's thousands of years old has grown three seed-bearing berries, marking it as "female" for the first time on record, the Guardian...

Guy Sues After Skull Crushed by Giant Falling Pine Cone

Man was napping in park when 16-pound seed pod crushed his head

(Newser) - Sean Mace—on vacation after losing his job in Washington—was napping under some trees in a San Francisco park while waiting to watch the Blue Angels perform when his skull was crushed by a falling 16-pound pine cone, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The accident happened in October 2014,...

Helen Keller's Favorite Climbing Tree Cut Down

The oak at her childhood home was damaged by tornadoes, bugs

(Newser) - As a child, Helen Keller used to enjoy climbing a large oak tree in the front yard of her home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the Times Daily reports. Yesterday, workers with chainsaws removed the tree, which had stood for more than 200 years. “Isn’t that the saddest thing?” Sue...

South Park Co-Creator Helps Save 3 Sequoias

Matt Stone's donation helping keep the trees from developers

(Newser) - The co-creator of South Park is helping save a trio of sequoias under threat from development in Portland, Oregon, which means "Lorax Dave" the protester might finally be able to come down, KATU reports. According to the Oregonian , the trees were planted in the mid-1800s, but developer Everett Custom...

Since 1990, We've Erased a Forest Twice as Big as Texas

Still, UN report finds rate of forest loss has improved over 25 years

(Newser) - There are positives and negatives to grasp from a new report on forest loss from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. The good news: The rate of deforestation worldwide has been halved over the last 25 years. The bad news: We lost 500,000 square miles of forest—an...

Earth Has 3T Trees —and That's Not Good

Study shows Earth has lost nearly half its trees since farming began

(Newser) - Congratulations, environmentalists, tree-huggers, and people who enjoy breathing oxygen: the Earth has seven times more trees—approximately 3 trillion—than previously estimated, according to a new study in Nature . Scientists from around the world created the first "data-driven global tree census" by combining satellite images with tree counts from...

Guy Drives to the Hospital With a Branch in His Neck

40-year-old mountain biker is lucky to be alive, doctors say

(Newser) - Keeping calm after, say, getting impaled by a tree branch might just save your life, doctors say. Take the example of a 40-year-old man who took a tumble while mountain biking in New Mexico. When he dusted himself off, he found the left side of his neck had been impaled...

How $220K Turned Up in a Tree

Money is linked to rumored bad marriage and a home fire

(Newser) - Money doesn’t fall from the sky, but a tree in Germany made it rain on passersby last week. A bag of money containing €200,000, or roughly $220,000, was hung in a tree in a campsite near the northern town of Mirow, the Local reports. Police say...

Tallest Redwood in Muir Woods Not So Old After All

Ring analysis shows Tree 76 is a mere 777 years old—not 1,500

(Newser) - You had us all fooled, Tree 76. Up til now, scientists believed that the tallest redwood in California's Muir Woods was about 1,500 years old, the Los Angeles Times notes. But the 249-foot-tall giant—or, as the San Francisco Chronicle now refers to it, "a puerile sprig...

'Doomsday Vault' Gets First Tree Seeds

Spruce and pine among new collection added to Svalbard Global Seed Vault

(Newser) - The " Doomsday Vault " sits on an Arctic Island, quietly helping to protect our future. At first, it mostly collected and stored food crops, but it recently got its first shipment of tree seeds, Wired reports. Norway spruce and Scots pine are, of course, not much of a meal,...

What Chimps Say When They Talk to Each Other
What Chimps Say When They Talk to Each Other
STUDY SAYS
Jan 21, 2015 12:58 PM CST

What Chimps Say When They Talk to Each Other

There's a special kind of fruit that makes them all chatty

(Newser) - Chimps chat, just like we do—and like many of us, they spend a lot of time gabbing about what they want to eat and where they're going to get their next meal, Discovery reports. For a study published in Animal Behaviour , scientists camped out in the Ivory Coast'...

4 Surprising Christmas Tree Facts

Christmas trees can be as tall as a soccer field is long

(Newser) - The spruce, fir, and pine trees we cut down to decorate our homes each winter carry a few secrets of their own, not least of which is that given the right conditions and time they can grow to be among the tallest trees in the world—some of them reaching...

600-Year-Old Tree Dies in New Mexico Drought

'Yoda' couldn't hang on

(Newser) - Yoda is no more. The rugged little Douglas fir had survived more than 600 years in a remote part of New Mexico, but the Albuquerque Journal reports that it died amid the state's current drought. "We had a moment of silence to pay our respects," wrote a...

Artist Creates Trees That Grow 40 Different Fruits

Sam Van Aken grafts fruit buds onto a base tree

(Newser) - A tree with 40 different fruits sounds like something out of fairytale. But Syracuse University artist Sam Van Aken is turning plum trees into orchards unto themselves, reports Time . Most of the year, his trees appear to be common fruit trees, but they eventually bloom in different colors and bear...

Chainsaw Prank Could Get 5 Students Arrested

Police expect charges after 25 trees cut down

(Newser) - Talk about going out with a bang. It seems students at Ohio's River Valley High School didn't learn from a senior prank that ended with 62 arrests last week: Five students, all either 17 or 18, are expected to face vandalism charges after police found as many as...

'Space Cherry' Tree Stumps Botanists

After stint in space, it blossomed at less than half the age of a typical tree

(Newser) - Usually, it takes about 10 years for a cherry tree to bloom after it's sprouted. Not so with Japan's "space cherry": The tree bloomed after just four, and experts can't explain why, the South China Morning Post reports. It earned its galactic nickname after quite the...

How a Florida Tree Can Make You Go Blind

Best not to touch a machineel

(Newser) - Visiting Florida? South America? Keep an eye out for machineel trees, because as Sploid points out, while they look perfectly harmless, they can be deadly. It's a pretty impressive (and lethal) resume: Standing under one in the rain can cause blistering when the drops hit you, its sap can...

Oldest Trees are Fastest Growers
 Oldest Trees 
 Grow at a 
 Scary Rate 
STUDY SAYS
Jan 16, 2014 7:03 AM CST

Oldest Trees Grow at a Scary Rate

They keep 'growing like crazy' as they age

(Newser) - Conventional wisdom about forestry has been chopped down and sent through the chipper by new research that shows large, old trees grow much faster than their younger counterparts—and speed up their growth as they age, becoming stronger as the years go by. Researchers studied measurements of more than 670,...

Tree-Munching Bugs Wage War on Christmas

Adelgids deplete fir tree population

(Newser) - Talk about a war on Christmas: It's happening right now in southern Appalachia, and the aggressors are freckle-sized bugs with no natural predators. The balsam woolly adelgid, as the creature is known, is wreaking havoc on Canaan and Fraser firs, famed as Christmas trees. The onslaught is leaving trees...

Anne Frank's 'Tree' Is Stolen

Sapling grown from original is cut down in Germany

(Newser) - One of the saplings grown from Anne Frank's beloved chestnut tree has been cut down and stolen, reports the Jerusalem Post . Someone felled the 8-foot tree that had been planted outside the Anne Frank School in Frankurt, Germany, at some point over the last week. It was one of...

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