10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World

I love trees. That is, I love MOST trees. I'm not a fan of trees that grow too fast and spend most of the year shedding leaves and/or fruit (read: the three massive sycamores I had in my back yard that I paid nearly $1,000 to have removed) or trees that rapidly spread by sending up shoots (read: the river birch I had in a former back yard of mine).

However, I don't demand perfection from my trees. I love my two 35-year old sweetgums that make thousands of spike balls, despite their nearly indestructible (and painful to a bare foot) offspring. I've owned a house with small trees in the yard. IMHO, a yard needs BIG trees to be right.

I also don't like the harvesting of hundreds-of-years-old redwoods. First of all, there are younger redwood trees that can be cut for lumber. Second, modern pressure-treated woods are approaching redwood's durability. While I don't hug them, I think any redwood older than 100 years old should be protected.

I live in a state (Arkansas) where virgin forest is extremely rare, despite the fact that it once covered large portions of its land. Why? Because it was systematically stripped bare by loggers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. I still get hacked off when I think about the fact that it's impossible to see an oak tree over 150 years old where I live, simply because of man's lust for money.

With that, I present today's FamilyFirst site: 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World.

You'll be stunned by the images and stories of some unforgettable trees. I say that even though one is a sycamore (a family of them, actually), and another is a single quaking aspen organism consisting of tens of thousands of shoots, much like the ones I had to mow down from that blasted river birch.

Enjoy!

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