Sample of Facts From the Book
(The relevant entries are mentioned in italics)
A rabbit gene has been added to a tree species to make its roots more efficient at breaking down soil pollutants (see Soil pollution, alleviation of).
Weight for weight the tensile strength of wood is about three times that of steel (Strength of wood).
The volume of wood in Sweden’s forests has almost doubled since 1920 in spite of all the logging, which shows that logging is nothing to be afraid of if it is sustainably done (Sweden).
The Black Death (1347-51) was followed by an increase in forestation as trees sprang up on the abandoned farms, and as wood consists largely of carbon this forestation lead to a reduction in atmospheric CO2, which in turn probably caused the “Little Ice Age” in the 16th to 19th centuries – global cooling can be at least as dangerous as global warming (Black Death).
The rapid shipbuilding programme of the Athenians before the battle of Salamis in 480 BC contributed to the deforestation of Attica which Plato mentioned, and later shipbuilding for the great naval battles between European powers and the Turks in the Mediterranean in the 16th century had the same effect elsewhere in that area (Salamis, battle of; and Shipbuilding).
Once Greenland had forests of alder, spruce, pine and yew in areas which are today covered by 2 km of ice. In Antarctica there were subtropical forests. On Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian Arctic, far to the north of today’s tree limit, there is an old fossilized forest. And the Greek geographer and historian Strabo wrote in the first century BC that in Spain a squirrel could jump from tree-top to tree-top right across the country. How things have changed! (Greenland and Antarctica; Fossilized (petrified) trees and wood; and Spain.)
The British World War II fighter plane the Mosquito was built of wood and was popularly called “The Wooden Wonder” or “The Timber Terror” (Mosquito).
During every ice age so much of the water was tied up in the ice sheets that the rainfall decreased in the world and the forests shrank, and then when the ice sheets melted and the rainfall increased again, the forests expanded (Ice ages and forests).
During the moon landing in 1969 tree seeds were taken along, and then brought back to earth again and planted, to see if the radiation affected the resulting saplings. It didn’t. The descendants of these saplings are popularly referred to as “moon trees” (Effect of radiation on trees)
Surprisingly, China has more forest than either Congo-Kinshasa or Indonesia (China).