--- title: Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest trees — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest trees», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Stand at the foot of a coast redwood in California and the people beside you look like ants: the tallest tree known --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and… # Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest trees Lesson 253 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/0/) — Stand at the foot of a coast redwood in California and the people beside you look like ants: the tallest tree known, Hyperion, is about 116 metres, taller than the Statue of Liberty with its base. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/1/) — Lift a log from the woodpile and you can count its age: each year a tree adds one ring of wood, pale in spring and darker in late summer. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/2/) — The oldest trees are often not the biggest but the toughest: twisted, half-dead bristlecone pines on cold dry mountains have lived for nearly 5,000 years. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/3/) — A tree has no pump, yet water climbs a hundred metres: leaves lose water into the air and pull up a thin chain of water from the roots, like sucking on a very long straw. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/4/) — Some trees are strange in other ways: a baobab stores water in a fat trunk, a banyan grows a forest of trunks, and some trees were known only as fossils until living ones were found. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/5/) — Coast redwoods in California are the tallest trees in the world; the tallest, Hyperion, is about 116 metres, its exact place is kept secret to protect it, and the fog they grow in gives water to their high leaves. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/6/) — Giant sequoias are the biggest trees by volume, General Sherman weighs about as much as ten blue whales or more, and their thick spongy bark resists fire, which helps their cones open. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/7/) — People once cut tunnels through giant sequoias for cars as a tourist trick, and one tunnel tree fell in a storm in 2017. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/8/) — Bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of California can live nearly 5,000 years; one named Methuselah is over 4,800 years old, already growing when the first Egyptian pyramids were built. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/9/) — A tree adds one ring of wood each year, wide rings mean good wet years and thin rings dry or cold ones, and scientists use rings in old timbers to date buildings and learn about past weather. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/10/) — Water rises in a tree because leaves lose water into the air and pull up a chain of water through thin tubes; water sticks together like a rope, and scientists think trees cannot grow much taller than about 120 to 130 metres. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/11/) — Baobabs store thousands of litres of water in their huge spongy trunks and drop their leaves in the dry season; some hollow baobabs have been used as a shop, a prison and even a pub. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/12/) — Some British yews may be 2,000 years old or more, like the Fortingall Yew in Scotland, but their age is hard to measure because they grow new trunks inside hollow old ones; almost all of a yew is poisonous except the red flesh of the berry. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/13/) — A banyan drops roots from its branches that become new trunks, and the Great Banyan in Kolkata covers an area like a big park with thousands of root-trunks, though its main trunk was removed in 1925. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/14/) — Bonsai are ordinary trees kept small by careful cutting of roots and branches in small pots, not special tiny kinds, and some bonsai are hundreds of years old. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/15/) — The dawn redwood was known only from fossils until living trees were found in China in the 1940s; seeds were sent round the world and it now grows in many parks. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/16/) — The Wollemi pine was found in a hidden canyon in Australia in 1994, with fewer than 100 wild trees, and firefighters were reported to have saved them from the bushfires of 2019 and 2020; garden-centre trees help protect the wild ones, because people can grow one at home instead of hunting for the secret wild trees. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/17/) — Mountain ash eucalyptus trees in Tasmania and Victoria are the tallest flowering plants, up to about 100 metres (redwoods are taller but carry cones, not flowers), and they need fire to make new seedlings. - ← previous: [Plants deeper: do trees talk? Fungi, warning smells and giant clones](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/252-plants-deeper-do-trees-talk-fungi-warning-smells-and-giant-clones/) - next →: [Plants deeper: carnivorous plants that count, slip and suck](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)