Things you didn’t know about tree trunks

Did you know that in regions that have different seasons, trees form new cells that appear in concentric circles inside their trunk? Known as annual rings, they chart the amount of wood grown in a season and can be used to tell the approximate age of a tree.

There are 3 main things that can be learned from the rings of a tree:

How old the tree is

Things that have impacted the growth of the tree such as fungal attacks and soil condition

Significant weather events and rainfall levels

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Here are some other bark facts that might surprise you:

• Bark helps to protect a tree from many things, including disease, drying out, fungi and animals. When bark gets damaged, disease and fungi can enter the tree and have a negative impact on its health.
• The tree reacts to damage by oozing out sap in an effort to seal the damaged area.
• Stripping a tree completely of its bark will most likely kill it.
• Cork trees are the exception to this. They can have half of their bark stripped and survive as they regenerate.
• Giant redwood trees have a spongy bark that grows up to 30cm deep. This ingenious bark is fireproof thus protecting the redwood from forest fires.
• Young trees have smoother bark as it cracks as the tree ages. For help and advice with trees on your property, speak to Dorset Tree Surgeon Kieran Boyland Tree Services.

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Here are some interesting facts about tree trunks:

• The middle of a tree trunk is known as the heartwood.
• The heartwood is super strong, helping the tree to grow tall and support its own weight and the spread of the branches.
• The advantage to spreading branches is greater access to sunlight and blocking out the sun to plants beneath it.
• Every year a new ring grows inside the trunk as the trunk gets wider.
• The entire network of the tree is found in the trunk. Two tubes run up and down the trunk. One is called the phloem, and this carries nutritious sap and the other is the xylem that transports water and minerals from the soil to the leaves.
• An adult oak tree is able to drink 50 gallons of water in just one day! During the heat of a summer day, this can rise to even more.
• The tallest tree on earth and the one with the longest trunk is called the Hyperion. It is a redwood found on the coast of the U.S and measures 115.5m in height.
• The tree with the biggest trunk in the world, by volume, is the General Sherman, a giant redwood in California.