A remarkable Arbre is a tree located for various characteristics. It thus concerns an inheritance by its scarcity, its dimensions, its position, its age or its force symbolic system.

History

The rarefaction of the surfaces occupied by the primary forests, the deforestation at ends of extension of pasture or culture, the overexploitation which leads to the more productive gasoline monoculture, destroying pollution, leads the man to become aware of the particular financial asset which can represent certain trees.

A little everywhere the censuses and inventories are carried out and certain trees are classified like monument and profit from care and protection.

To define what makes the remarkable character of a tree is not a easy matter to achieve. The criteria are variable, multiple and subjective. Apart from undeniable qualities which make certain individuals exceptional, like longevity or dimensions, many other parameters can return in account. A tree which can appear unspecified among its similar in the middle of a forest, will be noticed insulated and being used as visual reference mark in the middle of a landscape, planted in the middle of a place of village it will take a value symbolic system and cultural in the vicinity of the generations of men which will côtoieront it, only from his gasoline in an area, it will be distinguished for its scarcity, etc…

Trees of all the records

largest

• Some are absolute champions like the Général Sherman, a Giant sequoia of the Sierra Nevada in California considered as the most massive living being of planet with a volume evaluated to 1486 m ³.
• the Sequoia sempervirens along the northern coast of California would be largest. Since 2006, the record is of 115,50 meters, it acts of a Sequoia sempervirens named Hyperion of the National Redwood Park.

One finds very large trees on the west coast of the Australia and in Tasmanie.

oldest

The identity of the oldest tree is more difficult to determine.

The candidates are several thousand-year-old times and their age can only be evaluated. Moreover it is necessary to distinguish the tree resulting from a germination and those resulting from a rejection.

With the Sri Lanka, one finds a banyan crowned which would reach 2200 years and whose legend tells that it would have been touched by the Bouddha, although this fact is anachronistic. The age of some Séquoia would approach the 2700 years. A Cyprès of the town of Tula to the Mexico would have several thousands of years. A American Pinus aristata passes to be approximately 4700 years old, a Pinus longaeva would be 4900 years old and a Cèdre Japanese, 5200 years.

The age of certain tree at summer authenticated by Dendrochronology, either because they were cut down, or by sample. The oldest tree living known on Earth is Bristlecone named Mathusalem, which would have nearly 4700 years and is in California, its precise hiring remains however secret in order to avoid any act of vandalism. Another even the older, called Prometheus was cut down by error in 1964 whereas it was 4900 years old.

Well of others can claim with the championship in their gasoline or variety or an area, a country or a continent.

Esthetics

• esthetic qualities of a tree depend initially on its development, of the landscape index according to the place which it occupies in the environment and of its visual impact.
• an isolated tree is more easily seized by the glance than another belonging to a group. The competition between individuals strongly influences the morphology of the tree by the fight for the appropriation of the elements essential to the growth: water, minerals, the light and even space. If the horizontal growth of the branches charpentières is not blocked by the presence of close close relations, the crown can be spread out in a harmonious and symmetrical way. If the constraints of the environment are sufficiently low and that the tree should not have undergone ill-considered pruning, the tree can develop the port characteristic of its species and express its genetic potential.

• Contrary certain remarkable trees raises strange or fantastic forms sometimes due to pathogenic attacks (diseases, insects, or mushrooms), to a advanced age, or very often to difficult conditions of survival. One finds for example with cliff blank of the trees which have to develop a wide radicular system to anchor themselves in the least cracks of the rocks and to draw sufficient nutrients there. Or of the trees of desert or altitude, exposed to the bad weather which adopts squat forms, crawling or dwarf.

• the art of the Bonsaï codified by Japanese tends to reproduce all these forms observed in nature, of the “rigorously vertical” form with “crawling form”, “cascades about it” or “beaten by the winds”. In the beginning, many seedlings were taken in mountain for their naturally interesting forms.

The historical value

• the motionless and durable tree survives the generations. Some are associated with historical characters who either lived in their shade, or made them plant. According to the old habit to plant a tree to commemorate an event: birth or died, battles or victory, birthday, takeover… one puts them out of ground for the posterity. They are often the only element of the landscape to remain after long years.
• That they gave their name to a locality or a locality, or that they were used of benchmark or terminals to delimit a ground, one finds of it sometimes the trace in old texts or official documents. One sees them on tables or since the end of the 19th century, on photographs or postcards. Alive witnesses of the evolution of completed times, they establish the link with the human ones which preceded us.
• Of others still, exotic gasoline, is the brought back first of their voyages by the navigators or explorers of the last centuries.

Spiritual dimension

The tree was always essential to the man. It provided him shelter, food, protection, materials and fuel. All that, and more still, the strong impression which its size gets, its with dimensions timeless and yet quite alive, undoubtedly explains the particular place that it occupies, whatever civilizations, in the human spirit.

trees of all the legends

remain gods

trees of pilgrimage and trees healers

scarcity

Related articles

• Tree
• Forest
• Chronoxyle
• Inheritance
• List of the remarkable trees of France
• List of the remarkable trees of the world

External bonds

• association trees carries out an inventory of the remarkable trees of France.
• remarkable Trees of the Hauts-de-Seine

Some photographs :

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