Green giants: the biggest plants in the world

Which plant occupies 3 football fields by area? Which tree is taller than a 30-storey building? Can one leaf support the weight of an adult? The answers to these questions are in our selection of record–breaking plants.

The largest area

Ficus Bengali or banyan is the world champion in capturing territory. The plant grows aerial roots on the branches, which, growing to the ground, take root and turn into additional trunks supporting the crown. A tree can have many such "trunks", and from the outside it resembles a whole grove. But in fact it is a single organism. The record-breaking ficus grows 25 km from the city of Kadiri and is named Timmamma Marrimanu in honor of the temple built inside it. It has about 1,100 additional trunks, and its area is 19,107 m2. For comparison, the area of a standard football field is about 7,000 m2, that is, Timmamma Marrimanu is spread over the territory of three football fields. Under the crown of a banyan tree, 30,000 people can be at the same time. The age of the tree is estimated at about 550 years. 7 people take care of the giant ficus, and their main task is to protect it from tourists who want to leave traces of their visit on it or grab a piece for memory. In 1989, this banyan tree was listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

The highest height

The tallest tree in the world is the Hyperion sequoia, growing in California. Its height is 115.61 m, like a 34-storey building. The age of Hyperion is approximately 700-800 years. This is far from the oldest sequoia in the world. The tree could have been even taller, but the woodpeckers damaged its crown. To reach such heights, literally and figuratively, sequoias are helped by thick bark – in adult trees it can be up to 60 cm thick, moisture-soaked wood, resistant to fires, and impregnated with tannins that protect the plant from insects.

The most massive trunk

A California sequoia named General Sherman also wins this nomination. The diameter of its base is 31 m, to wrap your arms around it, you need to involve 37 people! The volume of wood of this giant is 1,478 m3. This would be enough to build 70 two-storey houses. And this tree weighs 2,000 tons, that is, about 500 elephants. According to scientists, General Sherman is 2,300-2,700 years old.

Giant length

It is impossible to call this plant the tallest, because its trunk does not stand vertically, but climbs the trunks of trees growing in the neighborhood. A rattan palm growing in Southeast Asia is a record holder in trunk length. It grows up to 250 m! Its diameter is about 7 cm. Thanks to the thorns, this palm clings to the trunks of its neighbors and reaches out to the light.

The largest sheet

The record holder in terms of leaf size is also a palm tree, royal raffia, growing in Central and South America. Its pinnately dissected leaves grow 25 m long and 12 m wide, one such leaf could cover a small pool.

And if we talk about whole leaves, then the largest area is the Victoria Amazonian leaf: it can reach 2 m in diameter and with stand the weight of a not very large adult (about 50 kg).

The most unusual record holder

This plant could take the first places in several categories at once: the largest weight – more than 6,000 tons, the largest area – 430,000 m2 and the most respectable age – from 14,000 to 80,000 years according to various estimates. And it is not surprising, because this is a whole forest of aspen-like poplars connected by a single root system, and therefore recognized by scientists as a single living organism. This forest, or rather the colony, is called panda. Its most interesting feature is that all the plants in it have the same genetic structure, that is, they are... clones. Poplar is a dioecious plant, which means that there are male and female trees that must interact to give offspring. This grove consists only of male plants that reproduce by shoots.

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