10 Greatest Trees in the World

Ever heard of the Buddha? Yeah, well this fig tree in Bodh Gaya, India, is believed to be the tree under which Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment approximately 2,500 years ago. According to Buddhist texts, right after the Buddha achieved enlightenment, he gazed up at the tree in gratitude with unblinking eyes for an entire week. Talk about a staring contest.

The Bodhi Tree was seen as a sacred shrine even during the lifetime of the Buddha by King Asoka, who held a festival every year in its honor. However, his queen is what many people would call "the jealous type" and had it killed by mandu thorns. But the Bodhi tree had the last laugh when it regrew in the very same spot and had a magnificent temple built next to it. Even today, the tree is the most important of four Buddhist pilgrimage sites.

(Photo: Courtesy of Ken Wieand via Flickr)

This Montezuma cypress is located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca and has the stoutest trunk of any tree in the world. One theory is that it's mulitple trees grown together. However, DNA testing has proven that it is indeed one tree.

In 2001 it was placed on the UNESCO tentative list of World Heritage Sites, and guess what? It is sometimes nicknamed the Tree of Life because of all the animal shapes that can be seen in its gnarled trunk.

(Photo: Alberto Inrocci / Getty)

While it may look like Baobab trees are shaped into their odd forms by imaginative horticulturists, the only hand of manipulation here is evolution. These large trees can grow up to 50 feet tall and are the natural equivalent of water towers. The trees are native to arid regions such as mainland Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Madagascar, and Australia and have been used in dry seasons for their water supplies stored in hollows in the tree. The white powder in their seed pods can be utilized as food, and their leaves have medicinal purposes.

(Photo: Ken Massey / Getty)

This horse-chestnut tree in Amsterdam provided a glimmer of beauty to Anne Frank at a time when she needed it most. In The Diary of a Young Girl, Frank's famed book about the time she and her family spent hiding from the Nazis during World War II, she describes this specific tree:

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy."

To the dismay of many, this iconic tree was blown down by high winds during a storm on August 23, 2010. Fortunately, the tree missed the historic Annexe, the house in which she and her family stayed.

(Photo: Jerry Lampen / Reuters)

While the Methuselah tree represents the epic history of our planet, moon trees are an exciting symbol of the future. In 1971, Stuart Roosa took 500 tree seeds on the Apollo 14 mission around the moon. Upon return, these far-out seeds were germinated and grew alongside Earth-bound counterparts across the globe.

These moon trees are a picture-perfect metaphor for our own future. Hopefully, we will learn to value the very organisms that make Earth a living, breathing, and habitable planet in the middle of a seemingly desolate universe.

(Photo: Nicholas Pavloff/Getty)