trees

El Tule, One of the Largest Trees in the World

Scientific surveys have recently estimated as many as three trillion trees grow all over the world. But out of that mind-boggling number, only a handful of specimens are majestic enough to be considered iconic. The tree with the largest trunk girth on earth, El Arbol del Tule, grows in a church courtyard in the small village of Santa Maria del Tule in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Certainly there are taller trees, ones with a larger volumes of wood, and others thought to be older, but none has the immense girth of El Tule (too-lay), which is estimated to have a circumference of more than 160 feet and a diameter of more than 38 feet. Scientists and arborists who have studied El Tule estimate it to be between 1,200 and 1,600 years old. read more