Only 2% of a Tree Is Actually Alive

It turns out that a tree’s secret lies in a super-thin strip of living cells—just about 2% of its entire bulk—hidden under the bark. Those cambium cells are busily pumping water up hundreds of feet, building new wood on the inside, and phloem on the outside, while the rest of the trunk is basically a scaffold of dead, timber-strong cell walls that keep the whole thing standing tall.

This two-layer system—living cables wrapped in layers of corpses—lets trees reach epic heights, weather storms, and even achieve near-immortality in forests. By building bodies from thin air, moving water at pressures that would squash us, and using dead wood as armor, they’re among the planet’s ultimate survival experts.

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