Goats in Trees

by Robbi | Feb 18, 2015 | Theme Info | 3 comments

As we have discovered, trees are awesome. But what’s awesomer than trees? Goats in trees.

Yes. One of the interesting trees I learned about while I was reading all about trees was the argan tree. Argan trees are found in Morocco. Morocco is a country in Africa, which is basically on the other side of the Earth from the US.

Argan fruit grows on argan trees, and it turns out goats are really fond of argan fruit. So much so that when the fruit is ripe, goats take to the trees to eat right off the branches, instead of patiently waiting for the fruit to fall to the ground.

They make very dedicated goats in Morocco.

But here’s a bonus fact: argan oil comes from the nut inside the fruit that the goats like to eat. It’s a very hard nut. At some point in the past, someone discovered that once the nut has been digested, it’s much easier to crack. This is a delicate way of saying that people used to collect the nuts out of the goat poop instead of straight from the tree because then it was much more crackable.

They make very dedicated argan oil harvesters in Morocco.

Nowadays, argan nuts are (supposedly) collected in a more hygienic way, though I must confess I couldn’t find any specifics about how they solved the hard nut problem, so who knows? And if you’re wondering what people use argan oil for – it’s recently been celebrated as a supernut of sorts, and is used as a “heart-healthy” oil for food and as an ingredient in very expensive skin and beauty products. All of this is to say that suddenly argan oil has become very popular.

So get to work, goats!
 

Have you learned about any interesting trees? Let us know by sharing in the comments below or on our Facebook Page HERE.

World’s Biggest Trees

by Robbi | Feb 13, 2015 | Theme Info | 0 comments

Some of the oldest and biggest trees in the world are found in California – redwoods, sequoias, and bristlecone pines. The oldest living tree (a bristlecone pine) is around 5,056 years old – scientists keep its exact location secret so nobody goes and tries to make gazillions of toothpicks out of it. The tallest tree is a sequoia called “Hyperion” that is 379 feet tall. That number might not be so easy to understand, but if you think that Alden is about 3 1/2 feet tall, you’d have to stack up about 108 Aldens to be that tall. And we only have one.

Recently, National Geographic magazine photographed another very tall sequoia called “The President,” which comes in at a measly 247 feet (only 70.5 Alden’s stacked up, though we still only have one):

It still took 32 days to get a photograph, which was actually 126 separate photos that they stuck together to make one giant photo. Check out this great video showing how they did it:

Have anything tree-related you’d like to share? Enter it in the comments below, on the Facebook page, or just email us and we’ll put it up.