Tag Archives: Tree Facts

More Amazing Tree Facts…

In this article, learn…

  • How trees stop air pollution
  • How many species of trees exist
  • How petrified wood is formed
  • How trees produce food from sunlight and carbon dioxide
  • How trees defy the laws of physics
  • About the amazing structure of a tree’s trunk

  • Air pollution and trees. Combined, New York City’s five million trees yearly remove an estimated two thousand tons of air pollutants, in addition to more than forty thousand tons of carbon dioxide from the air. Over an entire year, trees remove about .05 percent of the city’s air pollutants. It follows that people in well-treed neighborhoods breath easier than those were trees are absent. The more trees in a city the better (Haskell, p. 203.)
  • Distribution of trees on our planet. Ninety percent of all tree species on earth live in tropical forests (Tudge, p. 27). The further you travel north or south from the tropics at the equator, the fewer the diversity of the species of trees you’ll find. The endless forests of Canada, for example, are dominated by only nine native species of trees including a few conifers and the quaking aspen. In the whole U.S., there are only about 620 native species of trees. India, which is much smaller than the U.S. has around 4,500 species of trees, and in one region of Peru where studies have been conducted within a 15 hectare area, 825 tree species have been identified. Tropical America (both North and South) have tens of thousands of species of trees (ibid., p. 279).
  • How many trees are there? No one knows how many tree species exist on planet earth (Tudge, p. 27). Scientists’ best estimates are that there are approximately 60,000 species of trees (not including thousands of hybrids) in the world of which 600 are conifers. The total Continue reading

Why Humans Can’t Live Without Trees

  • Trees (and other plants) produce oxygen. Human and animal life need the oxygen for their survival, which trees (and plants) produce. Plants take in CO2 (carbon dioxide), the gas humans and animals exhale, and turn it into O2 or oxygen.
  • All animals and humans receive food directly or indirectly from trees (and other plants). Food for humans that trees produce include nuts, fruits and syrups.
  • Trees produce clouds in non-coastal areas due to their uptake of water from the soil and then release it into the atmosphere to form rain clouds, which then are carried by air currents into otherwise arid areas not near coastal regions.
  • Trees remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and produce the oxygen (O2) that we breathe.
  • Trees provide much of the food that we eat including fruits, vegetables, roots and nuts.
  • The meat that we eat were animals that fed either on plants or on animals that eat plants.
  • Trees help to produce rain clouds in non-coastal areas. They produce clouds in non-coastal areas due to their uptake of water and then release it into the atmosphere to form clouds for rain in otherwise dry areas.
  • Trees shield humans from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun.
  • Trees promote psychological, emotional and physical health, well-being and healing for people.
  • Trees provide people with essential healing medicines and oils.
  • Tress are part of food chain in earth’s ecosystem. The food chain is a system where one animals is dependent on another for survival. Trees and plants are the starting points in all the food chains in the environment because animals depend on plants for food, and humans depend on both plants and animals for food for survival.
  • Trees provide shelter for all kinds of living creatures including humans.