Wood

Wood is the main substance in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is mainly formed by the xylem vessels which transport substances that plants need to live. Substances that xylem transports include water and minerals obtained through the plant's roots, as xylem runs from the roots to the stems and leaves.

Different trees make different wood (see picture below): 1. Pine 2. Common Beech 3. Sycamore 4. Oak 5. Birch 6. Sugar Maple 7. Microberlinia 8. African Rosewood 9. Okoumé 10. Common Walnut 11. Brazilian Rosewood 12. Ebony.

HISTORY 

People have used wood for thousands of years for many purposes, including as a fuel or as a construction material for making houses. Buildings like the European Neolithic long house were made primarily of wood.

For certain building projects, like Solomon's temple, wood from the cedar of Lebanon was prized above all other woods. This warm, red wood is free of knots and has a fragrance, which is pleasant to humans, but repels insects, It was in every way an ideal wood for large buildings.

Wood has long been used as an artistic medium. It has been used to make sculptures and carvings for millennia.

Prayer Bead with the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion, Gothic boxwood miniature

The phrase "chip off the block" means a person who resembles their parent, especially in character. A chip is the same wood as the block from which it comes. The expression dates back to 270 BC when it appeared in Theocritus' Idylls.

The phrase by hook or crook dates from around the 14th century. It refers to a time when the poor were allowed to gather as much firewood from their lord's land as they could rake up from undergrowth with a hook or pull down from trees with a shepherd's crook. It was first recorded in the Middle English Controversial Tracts of John Wyclif in 1380.

Grinling Gibbons (April 4, 1648 – August 3, 1721) is widely regarded as the finest-ever woodcarver working in England. Most of his work was in lime (tilia) wood, especially decorative Baroque garlands made up of still-life elements at about life size, made to frame mirrors and decorate the walls of churches and palaces. His exquisite cascades of leaves, flowers and fruit adorn Hampton Park Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and countless other stately homes and churches.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES 

Wood is the hard tissue beneath the bark of many perennial plants. It is composed of water conducting cells, or  secondary xylem, and gains its hardness and strength from deposits of lignin. The secondary xylem is laid down by the vascular cambium which forms a new layer of wood annually, on the outside of the existing wood and visible when a tree is felled as an annual ring.

The central wood in a branch or stem is known as heartwood and is generally darker and harder than the outer wood; it consists only of dead cells. As well as providing structural support, heartwood often contains gums, tannins, or pigments which may impart characteristic color and increased durability. The surrounding sapwood is the functional part of the xylem that conducts water.

Woods are usually divided into softwood (from conifers) and hardwood (from flowering plants). Softwood makes up about 80% of the world's production of lumber.

Although in general softwoods are softer than hardwoods, this is not always the case. The difference between hardwood and softwood has to do with how they reproduce, not the hardness of the wood. Pitch pine, for instance, which is very dense and hard, is a softwood.

Cuipo wood is classified as a hardwood. However, according to the Janka test, the softest wood in the world belongs to the Cuipo tree, which has a rating of just 22 lbf (pounds-force) making it is drastically softer than Balsa wood which has a higher, but still very low rating.

Cuipo Tree

The hardest wood is said to come from the Australian Buloke (pronounced "Bull-oak") tree, with a huge rating of 5060 lbf. (For reference, a commonly worked with type of wood that is generally considered very hard is Hickory, which has a1820 lbf rating).

USES 

Wood has been an important construction material since humans began building shelters and, houses. Carpenters make houses of mostly soft wood such as pine.

Wood has always been used extensively for furniture, such as cabinets, chairs and beds. For many kinds of furniture carpenters use harder wood such as maple or oak.

Nearly all boats were made out of wood until the late 19th century, and wood remains in common use today in boat construction.

Wood has a long history of being used as fuel, which continues to this day, mostly in rural areas of the world. Hardwood is preferred over softwood because it creates less smoke and burns longer.

Wood pulp is wood that has been processed in into a pulpy mass of fibres. Its main use is for making paper, but it's also used to make rayon and other cellulose fibres and plastics. There are two methods of making wood pulp - mechanical and chemical. In the former, debarked logs are ground with water (to prevent charring) by rotating grindstones. The wood fibres are physically torn apart. In the latter, log chips are digested with chemicals (such as sodium sulphite). The chemicals dissolve the material holding the fibres together.

Most paper is made from pine, spruce and eucalyptus.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Gizmodo

Walnut

The walnut nut is originally from Persia and Turkey. The ancient Greeks learnt how to cultivate walnut trees, and the Romans adopted this skill in around 100 BC, bringing it to Britain with their legions.

Archaeological digs reveal walnuts were eaten by humans in France possibly as many as 17,000 years ago.

Pixiebay

The Romans thought that walnuts enhanced both desire and fertility, and scattered them over wedding couples like confetti.

Roman women used ground-up walnut shells to burn off body hair.

In Ancient Greece and medieval Britain, physicians used walnuts to treat mental illness and headaches, believing that the nut's skull-like shell and brain-shaped kernel symbolised its magical curative powers.

English merchants traded the walnut tree around the world, so that it became known as the 'English walnut'.

In California, walnuts have been grown since the 1700s, brought to the state by Franciscan missionaries. Now, the Central Valley of California produces 99 percent of total United States commerce in English walnuts.

Pixiebay 

American President George Washington blamed his poor dental health on breaking open walnut shells with his teeth.

In 2016, worldwide production of walnuts (in shell) was 3.7 million tonnes, with China contributing 48% of the world total.

A villager in China unknowingly used a hand grenade to crack walnuts for over 20 years, until he saw the grenade in a government flyer.

The walnut tree may reach 30 metres (100 ft) and produces a full crop of nuts about a dozen years after planting.

Pixiebay

Walnut tree timber is very hard and dark in color. It is a favorite in furniture making.

The world's largest walnut tree forest is in Kyrgyzstan. Hugging the 6,500-foot-high slopes in the shadow of the Babash-Ata mountains it covers At 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres),

Walnut husks can be used to make a durable ink for writing and drawing. The ink's good archival properties is thought to have been used by several great artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt.

Walnut ink was once used to stain the hands of criminals in Romani communities. Once stained, it is impossible to wash off and remains in the skin for a long period of time.

Today, the walnut is immensely popular in France's Dordogne region, where, despite a diet high in foie gras and other animal fats, the residents enjoy the second-lowest rate of heart disease in the world.

Walnuts are rich in polyphenols, chemicals that help the body ward off cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Most off-putting is the walnut's calorie count: two handfuls contain 650 calories.

Tree

A tree is a tall plant with a trunk, supporting branches and leaves in most species. 

Trees are not a taxonomic group, but a variety of plants that independently evolved woody trunks. 

Frogner Park Trees Wikipedia

TREES IN HISTORY 

The oldest living human-planted tree in the world with a known planting date is the sacred fig tree "Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi", planted in 288 BC in the Mahamewna Gardens, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. It is said to be the southern branch from the historical Sri Maha Bodhi at Buddha Gaya in India under which Buddha attained Enlightenment.

Leonardo Da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk reveals its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicated the annual moisture.

In 1964 American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree known as Prometheus cut down in the Wheeler Bristlecone Pine Grove at Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nevada. After studying the core of the tree, he found that he'd just cut down the oldest ever tree (at least 4862 years old) found to date.

The Ténéré Tree was a solitary acacia that was located in the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger. It was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth - the only one for over 400 kilometres (250 mi). It died when a drunk truck driver hit it in 1973.

Tree of Ténéré (1961)

TREE ANATOMY

90 percent of a tree is made up of air with the rest being made up of minerals from the soil.

The average tree is made up of about 99% dead cells, with only about 1% actually being alive at any given time.

Scientists have found that irrespective of diameter, height or species, most trees will snap if subjected to winds above 94 mph.

BEHAVIOR 

You can tell if trees need water by the sounds they make: the thirstier they are, the louder they get.

Each tree can absorb 4.8 pounds of CO2—in a year, an acre of trees absorbs equal the amount of CO2 produced by driving a car 26,000 miles.

Trees "sleep" at night, relaxing their branches after dawn and perking them up before sunrise.

Trees recognize their children, sending them more carbon below ground and reducing their own roots to make room for their kids.

Trees near rivers with salmon grow three times faster than trees without them - because bears leave their carcasses to decompose on the banks.

Every species of tree makes a particular sound as the wind blows through the branches. Firs sob and moan, hollies whistle and ash trees hiss. These noises are known as susurrations.

Trees have an underground communication and interaction system driven by fungal networks. They can trade resources, sabotage others or nurture their seedlings, and warn each other certain dangers.

"Mother trees" pass on information through the "wood wide net" of fungus. for best growth patterns and can divert nutrients to trees in need. They are more likely to give nutrients to trees of the same species.

POPULATION 

There are approximately 3.04 trillion trees in the world, or about 422 trees per person.

The total number of trees on Earth has dropped by almost 50 percent since human civilization began.

According to 2008 statistics, around 11% of the UK is covered by trees compared to 28% in France and 31% in Germany.

RECORDS 

Earth's oldest living organism is believed to be an 80,000-year-old colony of Aspen trees in Utah. The grove is made up of clones from a single tree and it covers 106 acres of ground.

The oldest living tree with a verified age is a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) growing in the White Mountains of eastern California. The tree was given the age of 5062 years in the growing season of 2012, (germination in 3050 BC). 

A large Great Basin Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains by Dcrjsr

The tallest known tree, a coast redwood named Hyperion at Redwood National Park, California, stands 1379 ft high.

The largest cashew tree in the world covers an area of about 7,500 square meters (81,000 sq ft) and produces over 60,000 fruits each year.

According to Guinness World Records, the Machineel tree of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico is the world's most dangerous tree. The sap that its trunk exudes is so poisonous that even standing under the tree in the rain is enough to cause blistering if the skin is wetted by raindrops containing any sap. Additionally, if one of these deadly trees is burned, the resulting smoke can cause blindness if it reaches a person's eyes.

Machineel Tree by Daniel Lobo

The record for most trees planted in 24 hrs by an individual is 23,060, set by Antoine Moses of Canada on July 17, 2021. Moses, who has been planting trees for six years, planted an average of 16 trees per minute during his record-breaking attempt. He was assisted by a team of volunteers, who helped to prepare the planting site and transport the trees.

The largest tree ever transplanted was a 108ft- wide, 95ft-tall, 750-year-old ginkgo biloba in South Korea. The listed tree, estimated to weigh 250 metric tons, was moved to stop it being submerged by the construction of a dam.

FUN TREE FACTS

A lover of trees is a dendrophile; the worship of trees is dendrolatry

The English city of Sheffield has the highest proportion of trees to people of any city in Europe.

One tree produces enough oxygen in a year to support two people. 

Some trees can survive temperatures as low as -269 degree Celsius (452.2 Fahrenheit). They have evolved a supercooling method where the insides of their cells turn into glass. Its a kind of suspended animation where the molecules don't really move.

Acorns don't appear on an oak tree until it is 40-50 years old.

A tree near a building raises its value by 14%.

Gerry Adams, Belfast-born president of Sinn Fein, has admitted that he is partial to hugging trees and has done so at Downing Street and at the White House.

In Germany there exists the only tree in the world with its own mailing address. The "matchmaking" tree receives about 1,000 letters per year from singles looking for love. Anyone can take letters from the tree and respond. It is estimated the tree is responsible for over 100 marriages.

Every US state has a state tree. Sugar Maple is the most popular being the state tree of New York, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

According to the World Economic Forum, China planted 2.4 billion trees in 2021, more than any other country in the world.

Sources Daily Express, Daily Mail

Sequoia tree

Sequoia is a genus of redwood trees in the Cupressaceae family. It includes the largest trees in the world.

The Redwood Highway, at Jedediah Smith State Park nr Crescent City, Calif. By Acroterion

The generic name commemorates the great Cherokee Indian Sequoyah (or Sequoya) (1760 – 1843), who gave his people an 'alphabet' for their language.

The only living species of the genus is the Sequoia sempervirens. They comprise the Dawn Redwood, Coast Redwood, and Giant Sequoia.

Fossil remains of extinct species Sequoia as old as the Jurassic Period are widely dispersed in the Northern Hemisphere. These include Sequoia affinis, Sequoia chinensis in China, Sequoia langsdorfii, Sequoia dakotensis of South Dakota, and Sequoia magnifica.

The dawn redwood is native to Lichuan county in Hubei province, China. Although the least tall of the redwoods, it grows to at least 200 feet (60 meters) in height.

The coast redwood occupy a narrow strip of land approximately 750 km (470 mi) in length and 5–47 mi (8.0–75.6 km) in width along the Pacific coast of North America in northern California and southern Oregon.

The coast redwood can reach 115 m (377 ft) tall with a trunk diameter of 9 m (30 ft). making it the tallest tree on Earth.

Coast Redwoods in Redwood National and State Parks

The current tallest of 3 trillion trees on Earth is the Hyperion, measuring 379.3 ft (115.61), almost twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. The tree was discovered in Redwood National Park on August 25, 2006 by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor, and is thought to be the world's tallest living organism.

The giant sequoia is the largest of living trees, having enormous bulk, up to some 30 metres/ 100 feet at the base, as well as being almost as tall as the redwood.

Most giant sequoias grow in 77 scattered groves on the westerly slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains from Placer to Tulare counties in California. These groups were formed as a protection from logging.

European-Americans first stumbled upon giant sequoias in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in 1853. It was brought into cultivation in Britain the same year by the horticulturist Patrick Matthew of Perthshire from seeds sent by his botanist son John in California.

Giant sequoia has been grown as an ornamental tree elsewhere in the US, as well as western and southern Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

A giant sequoia avenue at Benmore Botanic Garden, Scotland. Dougie Macdonald

The most famous area with giant sequoia trees is Sequoia National Park, in California which contains five out of the ten largest trees in the world. The park was made as the second national park, after the Yellowstone in 1980.

Several trees in Sequoia National Park have been named, for example General Grant, the Grizzly Giant or General Sherman.

General Sherman is the largest known living single stem tree on Earth boasting a mass of 52,500 cubic feet.

General Sherman Tree, in Sequoia National Park

The giant sequoia is, except for the bristlecone pine, the oldest of living trees, some specimens having been known to have lived more than 3000 years. The oldest living sequoia, The President, located in California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, is estimated to be about 3200 years old.

California's giant sequoias were considered to be fire-resistant for centuries, but with hotter and bigger wildfires becoming more common, 2021 saw the loss of 14% of the trees.  

Rubber

Rubber is a material which can stretch and shrink. It can be harvested in the form of the latex from the rubber tree or can be synthesized on a industrial scale.

Latex being collected from a tapped rubber tree, Cameroon. By PRA 

HISTORY

Ancient Mesoamericans discovered how to produce rubber around 1600BC, more than 3000 years before Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization.

Natural latex from the Hevea tree comes from the Olmec culture, in which rubber was first used for making balls to play a game in ceremonial ballcourts.

Early Spanish conquistadors reported the utilization of rubber in combination with textiles for waterproofing purposes in the New World: "rubber-coated rain capes were worn by the Indians of Escuintla on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, a region of heavy rainfall".

Early records dating to the early 1520s describe "an attendant wearing a rubber-coated poncho" and Aztec soldiers "clad in garments woven from the fiber of the henequen coated with indiarubber gum".

In 1738 Frenchman Francois Fresneau, a botanist and scientist sent to Cayenne in French Guiana, discovered rubber trees and smeared latex on some old fabric to create a rainproof material.

Rubber was given its present English name by the British chemist Joseph Priestley in about 1770.

In 1770 Edward Nairne, an English engineer, inadvertently picked up a piece of rubber instead of bread and in doing so discovered rubber's erasing properties. Nairne sold natural rubber erasers for the high price of three shillings per half-inch cube.

In 1818 a British medical student named James Syme used rubber to waterproof cloth to make the first raincoats. Six years later, Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1766-1843) patented the process to produce waterproof cloth for raincoats, after experimenting with waste rubber products from Glasgow's new gas works.

American chemist Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber on June 15, 1844. Goodyear is credited with inventing the modern chemical process to create and manufacture pliable, waterproof, moldable rubber, which was to be of great importance for vehicle tires.

Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear died penniless trying in vain to protect his patents. Brothers Frank and Charles Seiberling started the Goodyear Tire company in 1898 and named it in honor of Goodyear.

Stephen Perry of the London-based rubber manufacturing company Messrs Perry & Company, patented the world's first elastic bands in 1845. Sleeves of vulcanised rubber chopped into bands, they were invented to hold papers or envelopes together.

In 1888, a Scottish vet called John Dunlop fitted his son's tricycle wheels with inflated rubber hoses instead of solid rubber tires in order to make it more comfortable to ride. The invention handily coincided with the new bicycle craze and his company, formed in 1889, became known as the Dunlop Rubber Co in 1900.

James Colquoun. Date(s) of creation: [ca. 1896- ca. 1904)

The natural color of rubber is white – tires were white for the first 25 years of their existence as a byproduct of Zinc Oxide being added to the rubber to add strength. Black tires only started being made after in the early 1900s when, Binney & Smith began selling their carbon black chemicals to Goodrich Tire Company. This was because they found that the use of carbon black in rubber manufacturing significantly increased certain desirable qualities for rubber intended to be turned into tires.

In 1890 William Halsted, the professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, introduced rubber surgical gloves for use in the operating theater. They were not for the patient's sake but to protect the operating-room nurse, his fiancée, whose hands were allergic to antiseptics.

The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company was founded on August 6, 1892, in Antwerp, Belgium. The company was established to exploit the natural rubber resources in the Congo Free State, which was a private colony controlled by King Leopold II of Belgium. The company's activities in the Congo led to significant human rights abuses and exploitation of the local population, and it played a part in the larger complex of colonization and exploitation in Africa during that time.

Humphrey O'Sullivan, an Irish printer in Lowell, Massachusetts, patented his invention of the rubber heel for shoes on January 24, 1899. It was his custom to stand on a rubber mat to ease his tired feet as he set type. It was inconvenient to carry the mat from place to place, so O'Sullivan nailed pieces of it to the heels of his shoes. To keep the nails from working loose, he molded washers into the rubber. O'Sullivan's invention of rubber heel for shoes outlasted the leather heel then in use.

Sneakers Keds® were first mass-marketed as canvas-top "sneakers" in 1917.  The word "sneaker" was coined by Henry Nelson McKinney, an advertising agent for N. W. Ayer & Son, because the rubber sole made the shoe stealthy or quiet, all other shoes, with the exception of moccasins, made noise when you walked.

PRODUCTION 

The primary source of natural rubber is the Pará rubber tree, which initially grew only in the Amazon rainforest.

By 1898, a rubber plantation had been established in Malaya, and today, most rubber tree plantations are in South and Southeast Asia.

Rubber tree plantation in Thailand. By 松岡明芳 - Sukanya,

Fritz Hofmann, a German chemist, is credited with creating the first synthetic rubber in 1909. He worked at the Bayer laboratory in Elberfeld, Germany, and he was able to polymerize isoprene, a natural compound found in rubber trees. The resulting product was called Buna S, and it was used to make tires and other rubber products.

Sergei Lebedev, a Russian chemist, is also credited with creating synthetic rubber. In 1910, he synthesized a rubber polymer from butadiene, another natural compound. Lebedev's rubber was called SK-1, and it was used for large-scale commercial production during World War I and World War II.

The first rubber plant in Europe SK-1 was established (Russia) by Sergei Lebedev in Yaroslavl under Joseph Stalin's First Five-Year Plan on July 7, 1932. The SK-1 plant was a major success, and it was soon followed by the establishment of other rubber plants in the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1930s, the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading producers of synthetic rubber. 

Sheet of synthetic rubber coming off the rolling mill at the plant of Goodrich (1941)

Vulcanizing rubber joins all the rubber molecules into one single humongous molecule. In other words, the sole of a sneaker is made up of a single molecule.

During the 20th century world production of rubber increased a hundred-fold.

The top rubber producing countries in 2011 were Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Vietnam.

About 15 billion kilograms (5.3×1011 oz) of rubbers are produced annually, and of that amount two thirds are synthetic.

FUN RUBBER FACTS

Lego makes more than 300 million rubber tires a year — making it the world's biggest manufacturer of tires.

A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber.

The game of squash gets its name from the sound that the rubber ball makes when it strikes a wall.

The little rubber thingy at the end of a toothbrush is called a "stimulator tip."

The tiny bits of rubber sticking out of tires are called "nubbins" and they formed in the holes used to pump rubber into the tire mold.

Bubble gum contains rubber.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Source Comptons Enyclopedia

Pistachio

The pistachio is a small tree originating from Central Asia and the Middle East.

A pistachio tree can reach up to 10 metres (33 ft) in height, and can produce approximately 50 kilograms (110 lbs) of nuts over a period of two years.

Pistachios are in the same family as poison ivy.

Pistachios used to almost always be sold coated with a deep red dye, to hide harmlessly but unattractively splotchy hulls. Discolored hulls is no longer an issue with better harvesting technology, allowing today's pistachios to be sold without dye.

Pistachio nuts are highly flammable when stored in large quantities, and are prone to self-heating and spontaneous combustion. This is due to a chemical reaction that continues to take place in the nuts even after they are harvested.

It is believed The Queen of Sheba, who famously bought a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon, loved pistachios. In fact, she demanded that the entire region’s pistachio harvest be set aside for her.

U.S. is the second largest pistachio producer behind Iran.

98% of all pistachios produced in the U.S. are grown in California.

National Pistachio Day is observed in the U.S. on February 26, 2021

Pistachios are expensive because the trees take up to 20 years to reach peak production, and are "biennial-bearing", meaning a light harvest every other year.

China is the top pistachio consumer worldwide, with annual consumption of 80,000 tons, while the United States consumes 45,000 tons.

Pine tree

Pine trees are evergreen, coniferous resinous trees (or, occasionally shrubs) that live in almost the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Pine trees grow 3–80 m (10–260 ft) tall, with the majority of species reaching 15–45 m (50–150 ft) tall.

Japanese red pine (Pinus densiflora), North Korea. By yeowatzup at Flickr .

The smallest are Siberian dwarf pine and Potosi pinyon, and the tallest is a 81.79 m (268.35 ft) tall ponderosa pine located in southern Oregon's Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

The oldest pine tree is a Pinus longaeva growing in the White Mountains of eastern California. The tree was given the age of 5062 years in the growing season of 2012, (germination in 3050 BC). This also makes it the world's oldest known living non-clonal organism.

On August 6, 1964 American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree known as Prometheus cut down in the Wheeler Bristlecone Pine Grove at Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nevada, only to find that it was the oldest known non-clonal organism ever discovered at the time, with the age of 4,862 years.

The stump (lower left) and some remains of the Prometheus tree (center).

A 10-foot tall pine tree planted in memory of George Harrison near Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory in 2004 lived for 10 years. Ironically it died after being infested by....beetles.

When grown for sawing timber, pine plantations can be harvested after 30 years, with some stands being allowed to grow up to 50 (as the wood value increases more quickly as the trees age).

Scots pine is the only pine native to northern Europe and is an important tree in forestry. The wood is used for pulp and sawn timber products and its yield of turpentine, tar and pitch.

Scots Pine Cairngorm National Park, Scotland. By Hello, I am Bruce on Flickr

Pine trees scatter their needles across the forest floor to make it easier for fires to burn all of the other trees - pine is fire resistant so it survives.

The orange color of the soil in Ibiza comes from the tannin in the pine needles that fall from the island's many pine trees.

Pines are mostly monoecious, having the male and female cones on the same tree. The male cones are small, typically 1–5 cm long, and only present for a short period (usually in spring, though autumn in a few pines), falling as soon as they have shed their pollen. The female cones take 1.5–3 years (depending on species) to mature after pollination, with actual fertilization delayed one year.

The largest pine cone in the world comes from a coulter pine. Coulter pine occur in small areas of the west. The fresh cones can weigh up to 10 pounds.

Mexico has the greatest diversity of pine trees in the world. There are 111 identified species in the genus Pinus, 42% of which are found in Mexico.

Pecan

The Pecan is a nut-producing tree native to southern USA and northern Mexico and now widely cultivated.

The tree grows to over 150 feet (45m) and the edible nuts are smooth-shelled, the kernel resembling a smoothly ovate walnut.

Pecan Tree Carya illinoinensis, 68-year-old tree from seed. By Bruce Marlin - Own work: 

The pecan tree is the only major tree nut that grows naturally in North America and the North American Indians were the first to cultivate it.

Because wild pecans were readily available, many Indian tribes in North America and Mexico used the wild pecan as a major food source during autumn. A milky fluid was extracted that was used in making corn cakes.

The name "pecan" is a Native American word of Algonquin origin that is used to describe "all nuts requiring a stone to crack."

In North America, pecan seeds were traded between Native Americans back into the 16th century. The seeds were a rich and buttery flavor and edible in many forms.

Thomas Jefferson was a remarkably progressive Virginia farmer as well as statesman. He was one of the first to set out pecan trees.

The pecan industry's success is due to a slave named Antoine, who was a gardener and expert grafter of pecan trees.

Sweet desserts like pecan pie are very popular in the southern United States, but pecans are also used in other dishes or just as fresh fruit.

There is a pecan pie vending machine in Cedar Creek, Texas. The machine is open 24/7, is stocked daily, and contains full-sized pies and other sweet pecan treats.

The average American eats between 3,000 to 5,000 calories at their Thanksgiving dinner. The item that does the most damage to your waistline is pecan pie. Each piece is said to be worth 503 calories.

The largest ever pecan pie weighed 41,586 lb. and was 50 ft in diameter. It was made in Texas by the El Paso Diablos Baseball Club in 1999. The crust was created with 3,471 pounds of flour, 2,085 pounds of shortening, 170 pounds of sugar, 170 pounds of powdered milk and 3,000 pounds of water. The filling contained 1,500 pounds of pecans, 13,350 pounds of sugar, 850 pounds of margarine, 200 pounds of salt, 6,700 pounds of eggs, 210 pounds of vanilla and 9,700 pounds of corn syrup.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Olive

Wild olives were collected by Neolithic peoples around the Mediterranean as early as the 8th millennium BC,  It is not clear when and where olive trees were first domesticated.

Olives appeared in one of the earliest cookbooks ever discovered. This was a text written by a Roman gourmet named Apicius in the first century A.D.

The fruit of an Olive Tree by the Dead Sea in Jordan. Nick Fraser Wikipedia

The average life of an olive tree is between 300 and 600 years, but they can live for more than 1,500 years.

The world's oldest olive tree is over 3,000 years old, dating back to Minoan times between 1350 - 1100 BC. You can find it in Kavousi, Crete, Greece.

Branches from a 3,000 year old, still living, Greek olive tree were used to weave victors' wreaths for the winners of the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

An olive tree on the island of Brijuni (Brioni), Istria in Croatia, is said to be about 1,600 years old. It still gives fruit (about 30 kg or 66 lb per year), which is made into top quality olive oil.

The olive tree grows to a maximum of 50 feet tall.

The olive flower is white and only flowers after four years.

Olive trees take a very long time to bear fruit. They are generally harvested for the first time after around 15 years.

It was the Phoenicians who first brought the olive tree to Spain, but the Ancient Romans are credited with establishing vast farms of olives, often owned by absentee landlords who lived back in Rome.

Storing olives on Dere Street; Tacuinum Sanitatis, 14th century,

In 2011 there were about 9.6 million hectares planted with olive trees. Only coconut trees and oil palms command more space.

The ten largest producing countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, are all located in the Mediterranean region and produce 95% of the world's olives. In 2011 Spain produced just under 40% of the total.

Olive plantation in Andalucía, Spain

The olive garnish is what makes the Martini Cocktail, shaken or stirred.

Olives are essentially inedible when picked. It takes an extensive curing process for them involving  ye, a powerful corrosive, to become edible. There is no history of how an inedible fruit became such a popular fruit.

For thousands of years the olive branch has been used as a sign of peace and goodwill and ancient Greek brides wore or carried an olive wreath.

In Christianity, too, the olive branch is seen as a symbol of peace, dating back to the Old Testament where a dove brought an olive branch to Noah to show that the flood was over.

The term “to extend an olive branch” means an offer of peace or reconciliation.

Cats love green kalamata olives. They contain a compound similar to that in catnip.

Source Olivepress.es/

Oak tree

HISTORY

May 29 used to be celebrated in England as Oak Apple Day or Royal Oak Day in celebration of Charles II hiding in an oak tree at Boscobel to escape the Roundheads in 1651. The date was chosen as it was the King’s birthday.

Royal Oak Day was declared a public holiday by parliament in 1660. Its official celebration continued until 1859.  The date was celebrated by wearing sprigs of oak or oak apples.

The original Royal Oak at Boscobel was destroyed in the 18th century by tourists snipping off branches as souvenirs.

A descendant of the Royal Oak at Boscobel House.  Oosoom at en.wikipedia 

The oak tree under which Goethe allegedly wrote Faust's Walpurgis Night scene stood inside Buchenwald concentration camp.

Sweden has a forest of 300,000 trees planted on the lake island of Visingsö  in the 1830s by their Navy for ship production in the far future. When they received word that the trees were fully grown in 1975 they had little use of them as modern warships are built with metal.

CLASSIFICATION

The English oak (Quercus robur) is the most common tree species in the UK.

The English oak differs from sessile oak (Quercus petraea) in having acorns on stalks. The acorns on Quercus petraea are stalkless.

Sessile Oak near Roßberg, Hesse, Germany. By Willow - Wikipedia

Quercivorous means “feeding on oak leaves”.

LIFE

The usual lifespan of an oak tree is about 200 years, but some live over 1,000 years. In 2013, a 1,200 year-old Welsh oak was blown down by high winds.

Oak Trees grow to around 100ft tall.

Most oak trees don't grow acorns until they are 40- 50 years old.

Mature oak trees produce about 2,000 acorns each year but only one in 10,000 will ever become a tree.

FUN FACTS

The leaves and acorns of the oak tree are poisonous to cattle, horses, goats and sheep in large amounts due to the toxin tannic acid, and cause kidney damage and gastroenteritis.

Foliage and acorns of English oak Wikipedia Commons

In one day, a full-grown oak tree expels seven tons of water through its leaves.

Cork flooring and wine corks are created using the bark of the Cork Oak tree. The tree isn't cut down. The bark is harvested and begins to regenerate quickly to be harvested every seven years. The Cork Oak isn't harmed and is therefore a sustainable resource.

City Park in New Orleans holds the world's largest collection of mature live oak trees, some older than 600 years in age.

Source Daily Express 

Nutmeg

The Myristica fragrans is an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas (or Spice Islands) of Indonesia. Two spices are derived from the fruit of the tree: Nutmeg and Mace.

Nutmeg fruit By Joe Ravi, Wikipedia

Until the mid-19th century, the Banda Islands were the world's only source of nutmeg.

In 1621 Japanese mercenaries hired by the Dutch were landed on Bandaneira Island with the intention of enforcing Dutch monopoly over the Banda’s spice trade. Of the 12,000-15,000 residents all but 1,000 were killed or forced to leave the island as the Dutch created a nutmeg monopoly.

The British used to celebrate Twelfth Night with a drink called Lamb's Wool made from roasted apples, sugar and nutmeg in beer.

Shakespeare gives a recipe for pies in A Winter's Tale including mace, nutmeg, ginger, prunes, raisins and saffron to color it.

The Caribbean island of Grenada has produced nutmeg since 1843 when a British ship returning from the East Indies left a few nutmeg trees there on its way home. Today, Grenada produces more than 20 per cent of the world's nutmeg. Only Indonesia produces more.

Grenada is the only country that depicts a clove of nutmeg on its flag.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Nutmeg when eaten in large amounts can be hallucinogenic.

Source Daily Express

Maple Syrup

Maple syrup is a thick kind of syrup made from the sap of maple trees. The Sugar maple tree is its primary source.

Vermont has the most maple trees of all the New England states. More than 500,000 gallons of maple syrup are made there each year.

Abolitionists used maple syrup in their cooking because molasses and cane sugar were both slave crops. It was promoted in the 1800s as a slavery-free alternative to cane sugar: "Suffer not your cup to be sweetened by the blood of slaves."

The largest maple leaf was discovered by the Tanwar family in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada on December 14, 2010. It measured 53 cm (20.86 in) wide and 52.2 cm (20.55 in) long.

There have been other unverified reports of even larger maple leaves. In 2002, a Vancouver woman named Marilyn deHaan claimed to have found a maple leaf that was 60.9 cm (23.9 in) wide and 72 cm (28.3 in) long. However, her claim was never officially verified.

The Japanese deep fry maple leaves as a snack. It is commonly known as "Momiji" or "Maple leaf tempura".

The Sugar Maple is the state tree of New York, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Sugar Maple By Diego Delso, Wikipedia Commons

The Canadian province of Quebec is by far the largest producer of maple syrup. It produces about 70 per cent of the world's supply.

The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers has a "Fort Knox" vault of Maple Syrup. A barrel is worth about $1,200 or $2.88 per pound which is 10-18 times the value of U.S. crude oil.

The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist took place in July 2012 where three men stole 2,700 tons of syrup worth $18 million from a warehouse in Quebec.

Quebec produced enough maple syrup during the spring of 2016 to fill approximately 287 million six-ounce bottles or 24 Olympic swimming pools.

Canada has a strategic maple syrup reserve to ensure global supply in case of emergency.

It takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

Maple syrup has more calcium than milk.

The Canadian flag features a stylized maple leap with 11 points.