Trees Are So Weird

Trees are among Earth’s most extreme life forms: they pull carbon from thin air, crank water up hundreds of meters at tensions that would crush us, and build their massive trunks by endlessly wrapping living “cables” (xylem and phloem) in layers of dead cells.

Beneath the bark sits a razor-thin strip of living cells (the cambium) that tirelessly moves water, churns out indestructible wood, and coordinates millions of tiny processes—making trees astonishingly resilient and, in some cases, effectively immortal.

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