Babies born in 1954 have more Carbon-14 in their DNA ; trees have rings with a spike of C14 in that year, and even ringless equatorial trees will show an increase of radiocarbon if they were alive in 1954.

In the mid 1950s the United States, Britain, France and Russia tested not quite a million nuclear weapons. Maybe some part of them is still with you.
posted by plexi on Nov 16, 2008 - 63 comments

Old Growth Forests Are Valuable Carbon Sinks. "Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis published in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually 'carbon sinks' - they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries." Seven Best National Parks for Visiting Old Growth Forests. 20 Visually Arresting but Threatened Forests. [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Sep 14, 2008 - 32 comments

They started out as spritely saplings, but something went horribly wrong.... The lucky ones merely got a little funny, the others became tormented, monstrous. Creepy Trees.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on Jul 18, 2008 - 18 comments

10 Amazing Tree Houses from Around the World: Sustainable, Unique and Creative Designs. 15 (More) Amazing Tree Houses from Around the World: Unusual, Ecological and Inspired Designs.
posted by homunculus on Jun 23, 2008 - 18 comments

Festival of the Trees. [Via Scientist, Interrupted.]
posted by homunculus on Jan 3, 2008 - 5 comments

"So by this analysis dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than web media. We cut down trees and put them in the ground. From a climate change perspective, this is a good thing" explains Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine's editor-in-chief. While some decry this type of carbon footprint accounting as "cheating", the paper industry has lately been eager to convince the public that they are carbon-neutral.
posted by finite on Dec 29, 2007 - 36 comments

If you remember this scene, then this will be sad news. It's always sad to lose trees, but these are landmarks.
posted by tizzie on Dec 1, 2007 - 22 comments

An arborist in a helicopter Arborist Todd Irvine gets a ride in a news chopper, photographing and annotating Toronto’s tree canopy – still largely in place and vibrantly colourful due to winter’s late arrival. [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Nov 16, 2007 - 23 comments

An espalier is a plant trained to grow flat against a wall, fence, or trellis. Developed by the Romans, they were popular in Middle Age Europe as a source of fruit in castles and monasteries because they could be grown against the keep's stone walls leaving open space unencumbered. Now they are an excellent choice for apartment and condo dwellers with small yards. For larger yards espaliers can be used as a decorative feature, to provide shade or to increase the variety of trees under cultivation. University of Florida PDF detailing the technique.
posted by Mitheral on Sep 17, 2007 - 16 comments

Witness trees teach us about presettlement landscapes, surveying methods and Native American art forms. Witness trees inspire us, hide in plain sight, have free parking, become forgotten and sometimes become tables. Witness trees are protected by law and sometimes by signs, but not protected from stupidity. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
posted by jessamyn on Sep 3, 2007 - 19 comments

Pearl Fryar just wanted to win Yard of the Month back in 1984. Today his Bishopville, SC garden may be the most original example of outsider art in Southeastern America, and a tourist destination in it's own right.
posted by 1f2frfbf on May 16, 2007 - 22 comments

A retired construction guy with a large property was bulldozing a new driveway and noticed some shiny rocks. He excavated carefully, revealing an entire forest of upright, undisturbed petrified trees (photo gallery). Soon he began cataloging and selling pieces to museums but has since stopped. More about his find. (via girlhacker)
posted by mathowie on May 4, 2007 - 29 comments

Say you live in a forest and have limited resources. You need to make signposts to point out trails, water sources, meeting places and the like, but your readers might speak a variety of languages. Also, you want the signposts to last a really long time. What do you do? Create trail trees! Now say you live in the 21st century. What do you do? Create a database! And blog about it!
posted by DU on Apr 13, 2007 - 20 comments

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. [25 min Google Video.]
posted by homunculus on Mar 27, 2007 - 37 comments

The 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World.
posted by homunculus on Mar 21, 2007 - 63 comments

Rosmarie Fiore is doing some fascinating and beautiful things with long exposures and 80's arcade games.

In the meanwhile, Patrick Dougherty is doing some fascinating and beautiful things with sticks and twigs. [more inside]
posted by wander on Feb 9, 2007 - 17 comments

Moroccan Argan Trees threatened by climbing goats.
More pictures of goats in trees.
posted by Partial Law on Jan 5, 2007 - 50 comments

Grow your own. Furniture that is. Christopher Cattle has pictures and basic instructions on growing a three legged stool. Similiar previously here, here, and here.
posted by Mitheral on Dec 10, 2006 - 12 comments

Whole Tree Shredding. This is not your average rotary mulcher. Watch the "SLASHBUSTER"® HD 480B chew through 10-14 inch diameter trees with ease. No auxiliary engine is necessary. Horsepower-for-horsepower this is the highest performance tree shredder available.
posted by Falconetti on Apr 19, 2006 - 62 comments

The Treesweater Tonight while I was out on a smoke break, I looked at the tree and thought, “Man, that is one sad tree. It looks cold and wet and pathetic. It needs a sweater!” Make your own
posted by arcticwoman on Apr 9, 2006 - 42 comments

"Lost World" found in Indonesian Papua (with audio)
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome on Feb 7, 2006 - 21 comments

Graphs, Maps, Trees. The Valve is hosting a literary event for professor Franco Moretti's new book, Graphs, Maps, Trees. Moretti aims to reinvigorate literary studies by constructing abstract models based upon quantitative history, geography, and evolutionary theory. PDFs of the original articles: Graphs, Maps, Trees. A review at n+1 is here.
posted by painquale on Jan 13, 2006 - 10 comments

Biopresence creates human DNA trees by transcoding the DNA of a human within the DNA of a tree in order to create "Living Memorials" or "Transgenic Tombstones".
posted by stbalbach on Oct 14, 2005 - 20 comments

After nearly being wiped out by a fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica), that was first identified in 1904, the American chestnut is attempting to make a comeback with a little help from its fungus-resistent Chinese cousin ... and maybe you. [more inside]
posted by terrapin on Oct 13, 2005 - 18 comments

Sequoiadendron giganteum, the giant sequoia, is arguably the largest living thing on earth. The second largest specimen, the Washington Tree, has recently been getting shorter. It's top was discovered to be hollow in 1999--a researcher rappeled over 100 feet into the trunk--which is why its been vulnerable to fire and storms in recent years. The before and after pictures show its transformation from a tree into, well, a great big stump. But don't count it out just yet. Scientists think this old bugger may bounce back. Still, it's probably time for a visit, don't you think?
posted by donovan on Feb 25, 2005 - 8 comments

This week's Time for Kids magazine, [fifth-grade reading level req.] includes an interesting feature on Tree Climbers International an organization that teaches people how to climb nearly any tree... Not just a sport for kids anymore. These days, large trees that were once considered too big to climb can now be scaled with ease and safety. Even by grown-ups.
posted by RockyChrysler on Jan 27, 2005 - 5 comments

Methuselah is 4,767 years of age. The Bristlecone Pines began life during the Third Dynasty in Egypt.
posted by arse_hat on Dec 30, 2004 - 27 comments

FraudFrond: There are over 32,000 cell phone towers in the U.S. disguised as fake trees, how many can you find? [via]
posted by falconred on Sep 25, 2004 - 17 comments

Sudden Oak Death is caused by a fungus-like organism called Phytophthora ramorum and it has been discovered at Monrovia and other nurseries in California. Georgia officials have banned all sales of plants from California for the time being. SOD is frequently compared to Chestnut Blight, which killed 3.5 billion trees in about fifty years and almost wiped out the entire species. There is a different mating type of the microbe in Europe and it is believed that if the two were to come together this could potentially result in a much more devastating form of SOD.
posted by bargle on Mar 18, 2004 - 7 comments

Project Last Stand, a forest conservation group, has a new spokesman, and he's a hobbit. Monaghan also works with the group Future Forests, and is officially CarbonNeutral. He seems to have taken the warning of the trees to heart. I guess working with an animatronic ent has an effect on a person.
posted by homunculus on Dec 10, 2003 - 19 comments

Trees and their doppelgangers (!) Kooky konceptual artist Chris Wildrick invites you to match the trees with their look-alikes. Who says family fun is dead
posted by Cranky Media Guy on Oct 5, 2003 - 6 comments

Synthetic Trees could purify the air - "It looks like a goal post with Venetian blinds," said the Columbia University physicist...synthetic trees could help clean up an atmosphere grown heavy with carbon dioxide..."You can be a thousand times better than a living tree...There are a number of engineering issues which need to be worked out," he said. (BBC) Hurry up, then - "Ice dams are blocking Latvian ports, winds and storms are battering Europe, Portugal is freezing, Vietnam has lost one-third its rice crop, and the cold has caused close to 2,000 deaths in usually temperate South Asia."
posted by troutfishing on Feb 23, 2003 - 18 comments

Treetop Bloggers Protest Logging A group of anti-logging activists are now ready to maintain their own blog 130 feet up in an ancient redwood. I've considered tree sitting, but find myself much more inclined to do so if I could continue working (or reading MeFi, as the case may be). Interesting intersection of technology and activism. Doncha think? (via /.)
posted by maniactown on Dec 13, 2002 - 6 comments

"There was only one giant golden spruce in the world, and, until a man named Grant Hadwin took a chainsaw to it, in 1997, it had stood for more than three hundred years in a steadily shrinking patch of old-growth forest in Port Clements, on the banks of the Yakoun River, in the Queen Charlotte Islands." A fascinating read, from this week's New Yorker.
posted by GriffX on Oct 31, 2002 - 24 comments

Le Voyage dans la Lune/A Trip to the Moon A tree grows in Houston. Apparently a cache of tree seeds were carried into space by an American astronaut in the early 1970s. They were carried home, planted, grown into seedlings, and distributed around the country, mostly in honor of the 1976 bicentennial. Anyway, no one took note of where the moon trees went. A curious NASA scientist is on the hunt for the locations of the moon trees. Do you have a moon tree in your town? Do you have a documented historic tree in your area? Are your local trees protected? Does this make local residents irate?
posted by jengod on Oct 22, 2002 - 13 comments

an allegedly phallic tree Would you agree to dismemberment for neighborhood peace?
posted by onegoodmove on May 16, 2002 - 24 comments

Treesitter Falls to Her Death in Mt. Hood National Forest. 95% of our old-growth forests are gone. A coalition of grassroots organizations are dedicated to peacefully protecting our forests and watersheds, and have been quite sucessfull in Oregon and northern California. Sen. Ron Wyden D-Ore., an opponent of the timber sale, had announced a few days before that the U.S. Forest Service had reached an agreement to cancel the logging contract after an independent review determined the deal required significant modifications to prevent environmental harm, and tree sitters were days away from leaving the site after a three-year vigil. I appreciate the work and risks taken by these activists. More info at tree-sit.org.
posted by Mack Twain on Apr 21, 2002 - 38 comments

Strip tease for the trees. Now this is environmentalism that every red-blooded American male can get behind. What next, "Chippendales Say Earth First!"
posted by MAYORBOB on Nov 11, 2001 - 13 comments

Poetry - Tree Poetry, Funny Tree Poetry. I want to hug some trees.
posted by semper on Nov 9, 2001 - 7 comments

Baseball player plans to start a forest. Stan Javier, of the Seattle Mariners, is retiring after this year. He and two contributors plan to spend $31 million dollars toward a forest of mahogany and teak trees to take up between 15,000 and 20,000 acres by the year 2003. They plan to harvest the trees for lumber, but the article suggests that the trees would be as crops much like a farmer harvests wheat and then replants. The potential for this idea gives me a feeling as warm and fuzzy as a marmoset.
posted by moz on Oct 24, 2001 - 24 comments

After 225 years, America finally has a National Tree. Oak won with nearly 25% of the 400,000+ votes cast over the internet in a 21 way race. Hope your vote counted.
posted by tamim on May 1, 2001 - 37 comments

Obviously, the answer to global warming is to cut down all the trees. Or maybe we should just paint them all white?
posted by CRS on Apr 24, 2001 - 18 comments

Feeling left out by the democratic process? Despair not. Now you can vote for your favorite artists for American Music Awards, favorite TV shows for the TV Guide Awards, or, if you are feeling extra patriotic, for America's National Tree at the Arbor Day website, and have the vote count.
posted by tamim on Jan 7, 2001 - 2 comments

Uh, oh. The price of protest is eternal vigilance, or something. Perhaps Ms. Hill was too busy flogging her book. No, seriously -- if one were to make a deal with Satan, would one really expect him to keep his side of the bargain?
posted by dcehr on Nov 28, 2000 - 18 comments

Ficus2000 hoped to bring reform and change to congress by providing a choice to uncontested congressional seats, a ficus tree. "The United States Congress is full of babbling idiots and bumbling morons," said Ficus campaign strategist and filmmaker Michael Moore. In one poll, the plant had a 91% lead on incumbant RP Frelinghuysen, however lost in the election. Too bad, at least the ficus would've produced clean air
posted by Zebulun on Nov 9, 2000 - 4 comments