Favourite Tree

Velzerat

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This little guy right here. He may look small, innocent and not very impressive. An unknowing stranger might even think it's just another beach-tree or whatever...

...but I can assure you, it's not. From Wikipedia:

"The manchineel tree, Hippomane mancinella, is ..." "...A present-day Spanish name is in fact manzanilla de la muerte, "little apple of death". This refers to the fact that manchineel is one of the most poisonous trees in the world."

The tree and its parts contain strong toxins, some unidentified. Its milky white sap contains phorbol and other skin irritants, producing strong allergic dermatitis.[2] Standing beneath the tree during rain will cause blistering of the skin from mere contact with this liquid (even a small drop of rain with the milky substance in it will cause the skin to blister). Burning the tree may cause blindness if the smoke reaches the eyes.

So yeah. One of the most deadly trees in the world, I'll go with that.
 

Jivvi

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Dendrocnide moroides, also known as the stinging bush, gympie stinger, mulberry-leaved stinger, gimpi gimpi, gympie,[sup][1][/sup] stinger or moonlighter, is a large shrub native to rainforest areas in north half of eastern Australia, the Moluccas and Indonesia. It is best known for stinging hairs which cover the whole plant and deliver a potent neurotoxin when touched. It is the most toxic of the Australian species of stinging trees. The fruit is edible if the stinging hairs that cover it are removed.[sup][5][/sup]
D. moroides usually grows as a single-stemmed plant reaching 1–3 metres in height. It has large, heart-shaped leaves about 12–22 cm long and 11–18 cm wide, with finely toothed margins.


Contact with the leaves or twigs causes the hollow, silica-tipped hairs to penetrate the skin. The sting causes an extremely painful stinging sensation which can last for days, weeks, or months, and the injured area becomes covered with small, red spots joining together to form a red, swollen mass. The sting is potent enough to kill humans, dogs, and horses, and is infamously agonizing. Stories tell of horses jumping off cliffs after being stung, and supposedly one Australian officer shot himself to escape the pain of a sting.One man who was slapped in the face and torso with the foliage said, "For two or three days the pain was almost unbearable; I couldn't work or sleep, then it was pretty bad pain for another fortnight or so. The stinging persisted for two years and recurred every time I had a cold shower. ... There's nothing to rival it; it's ten times worse than anything else."
However, the sting does not stop several small marsupial species, including the red-legged pademelon, insects and birds from eating the leaves. Moroidin, abicyclic octapeptide containing an unusual C-N linkage between tryptophan and histidine, was first isolated from the leaves and stalks of Dendrocnide moroides, and subsequently shown to be the principal compound responsible for the long duration of the stings.
There has been anecdotal evidence of some plants having no sting, but still possessing the hairs, suggesting a chemical change to the toxin.
 

Jolterino

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French_Fries

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Kauri Tree



It is the largest (by volume) but not tallest species of tree in New Zealand, standing up to 50 m tall in the emergent layer above the forest's main canopy. The tree has smooth bark and small narrow leaves. Other common names to distinguish A. australis from other members of the genus are southern kauri and New Zealand kauri.
Kauri forests are among the most ancient in the world. The antecedents of the kauri appeared during the Jurassic period (between 190 and 135 million years ago). Although the kauri is among the most ancient trees in the world, it has developed a unique niche in the forest. With its novel soil interaction and regeneration pattern it can compete with the more recently evolved and faster growing angiosperms. Because it is such a conspicuous species, forest containing kauri is generally known as kauri forest, although kauri need not be the most abundant tree. In the warmer northern climate, kauri forests have a higher species richness than those found further south.

All of the above info is from Wikipedia.
 

Catcocomics

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Technically, Bamboo is a type of grass.

But I can see where you'd make that mistake, due to forestry industry treating Bamboo as "trees" and to a large amount of Bamboo in one place being called a forest instead of being called a field.

Also, I think we should abandon the use of trees for lumber and just use bamboo because bamboo is higher quality wood than actual trees and it grows faster than actual trees.
 
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