Trees potx

Trees

EYEWITNESS COMPANIONS

IDENTIFICATION • FORESTS •

HISTORIC SPECIES • WOOD TYPES

EYEWITNESS COMPANIONS

Trees

COLIN RIDSDALE

JOHN WHITE

CAROL USHER

Foreword by

DAVID MABBERLEY

Foreword 10

WHAT IS A TREE?

12

Tree Classification 14

Tree Evolution 16

Tree Structure 18

How Trees Work 20

Tree Reproduction 22

Forests of the World 24

Coniferous Forests 26

Temperate Broadleaf

Forests 28

Tropical Broadleaf

Forests 30

Tropical Rainforests 32

Barren Lands 34

Identifying Trees 36

First published in 2005 by

Dorling Kindersley Limited

80 Strand, London WC2R ORL

A Penguin Company

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Copyright © 2005 Dorling Kindersley Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

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recording, or otherwise, without the prior written

permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

ISBN-10: 1-4053-1070-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-40531-070-3

Colour reproduction by Colourscan, Singapore

Printed and bound in Hong Kong,

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Illustrators

Ina Stradins

Angeles Gavira Guerrero

Vanessa Marr

Cathy Meeus

Kavita Dutta, Shefali Upadhyay,

Romi Chakraborty,Arunesh

Talapatra, Enosh Francis

Dipali Singh, Glenda Fernandes,

Rohan Sinha,Aekta Jerath,

Mary Lindsay

Phil Ormerod

Liz Wheeler

Bryn Walls

Jonathan Metcalf

Pankaj Sharma

John Goldsmid, Balwant Singh,

Sunil Sharma

Kevin Ward

Gill Tomblin,

Ann Winterbotham

Disclaimer: Culinary, herbal, or medicinal uses mentioned in

the book are purely anecdotal.They are not recommendations of

the author or the publisher and should not be put into practice.

CONTENTS

LIVING WITH

TREES

38

Early People

and Trees 40

Tree Myths and

Spirits 42

Trees for Sustenance 44

Trees for Wood

and Building 46

Trees for Paper

and Pulp 48

Other Products

from Trees 50

Trees for Amenity

and Ornament 52

Planting and Caring

for Trees 54

Forest Practice 56

Trees and the

Environment 58

Tree Conservation 60

TREES OF

THE WORLD

62

SPORE TREES 64

SEED TREES 66

Cycads 68

Ginkgo 70

Conifers 74

Flowering Trees 110

Primitive Angiosperms 112

Monocotyledons 122

Dicotyledons 141

Glossary 344

Tree Families 349

Index 350

Acknowledgments 359

FOREWORD 11

FOREWORD

In every society, trees provide food

in terms of fruits and nuts,

flavourings, and even edible flowers

and leaves. Trees are the source of

pharmaceuticals, as well as building

timber and firewood. Their protective

bark provides not only medicines but

also resins, barkcloth, and cork. Their

heartwood and water-transport

systems produce long-lasting wood

that is used to make furniture and the

pulp for all modern books and

newspapers. Trees provide the bases

for the perfume industry.

As a whole, forests harbour 75 per

cent of the world’s biodiversity. Trees

intercept rainfall and gently release it

in watersheds; they absorb carbon

dioxide and replenish the air with

oxygen. Trees are planted to restore

degraded landscapes and provide

forage for hungry animals. They

protect coastlines and river-banks.

Some act as important shade trees

and wind-breaks; many others are

grown as ornamentals.

The original vegetation of much of

the world was dominated by trees, and

our ancestors were tree-living

primates. Trees were the sources of

food and medicine long before there

was human consciousness. They still

feature strongly in our human psyche:

the forbidding forests of fairy tales,

sacred groves, the Tree of Knowledge,

SWAMP CYPRESS

The buttresses of this deciduous conifer rise from the

freshwater swamps of the southeastern, USA. The

Swamp Cypress (Taxodium distichum) displays rich,

orange-brown colours in autumn.

and the Tree of Life – in Christianity,

Jesus’s cross is often called “the Tree”.

We have a great fascination with the

tallest and oldest trees, which span

generations of human lives. Their

majestic gigantism is as attractive as

that of the dinosaurs.

Perhaps even more importantly,

trees have provided the building

materials and fuel for most

civilizations, either as wood or

fossilized as coal. More trees are used

for fuel than construction – indeed the

North American tribes thought that

the first European settlers could only

have left their country because they

had run out of firewood.

Brought up in the English

countryside before it was so mercilessly

pressed into intensive agriculture, I

was privileged, as a boy, to wander

through woodlands and along

hedgerows, learning for myself about

the trees and the animals that they

sheltered. Standing in a tropical

rainforest, amongst the redwoods of

California, the giant eucalyptus of

southwestern Australia, or even the

relic pine forests of Scotland, inspires

an awe that few other experiences can.

Not merely for economic reasons,

then, should we do all we can to

conserve these bases of civilization,

trees, but because we rely on them so

much for our spiritual welfare too.

DAVID MABBERLEY

University of Washington, Seattle;

Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands;

University of Western Sydney & Royal

Botanic Gardens Sydney, Australia

“THE FOREST IS A PECULIAR ORGANISM OF

UNLIMITED KINDNESS AND BENEVOLENCE THAT

MAKES NO DEMAND FOR ITS SUSTENANCE AND

EXTENDS GENEROUSLY THE PRODUCTS OF ITS LIFE

ACTIVITY: IT AFFORDS PROTECTION TO ALL BEINGS,

OFFERING SHADE EVEN TO THE AXEMAN WHO

DESTROYS IT.” The Buddha

WHAT IS

A TREE?

14

This definition is not absolute; gardeners

contest the height threshold, some

preferring five metres (17ft) and others

choosing a threshold of three metres

(13ft). It is likely that bonsai enthusiasts

would entirely dismiss any figures

suggested. Horticultural selections of

dwarf conifers also fall into a grey area

usually called “dwarf trees”.

BOTANICAL CLASSIFICATION

Classification is the process of arranging

plant groups into an order. This helps

with the identification of individual

species and indicates natural relationships

between groups. Attempts to classify

plants were made by the Ancient Greeks

and Romans, including Theophrastus in

the 3rd century BCE. and Pliny the Elder

before 79CE. Their methods relied on

sometimes very long descriptions instead

of succinct names.

Over the centuries several other

systems were proposed. The two-part

scientific naming system still in use today

(see right) was devised by Carl von Linné

(known as Linnaeus) a Swedish botanist

who published his Species Plantarum in

1753. Linnaeus used a classification

system known as artificial classification,

The definition of a tree accepted by science and the forestry industry

is “A woody plant (arboreal perennial) usually with a single columnar

stem capable of reaching six metres in height”. Less than six metres

(21ft) of potential height is regarded as a shrub.

Tree Classification

WHAT IS A TREE?

FLOWERING TREES

Each of these categories of

flowering trees includes a number

of families that share certain

features, such as fruit type or leaf

arrangement.

SEED TREES

This varied group

includes the

primitive cycads

and ginkgo as well

as conifers and the

diversity of tree

types found among

the flowering trees.

MAJOR DIVISIONS

This chart indicates the major groups and

subgroups of trees described in this book. It does

not imply any kind of evolutionary order. Trees are

not equally divided between groups. The spore

trees, the most primitive, are represented by only

one living genus, although they were far more

plentiful in prehistoric times. Seed trees include

the most numerous group: the dicotyledons.

SEED TREES

FLOWERING

TREES

PRIMITIVE

ANGIOSPERMS DICOTYLEDONS

CYCADS GINKGO CONIFERS

SPORE TREES

MONOCOTYLEDONS