Extraordinary plants, trees, and fungi

Trees older than Christianity and other jaw-dropping botanical facts

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Maybe you've mastered growing tomatoes or finally figured out why your geraniums keep dying, and that’s all very well. Still, the botanical world has been keeping some seriously wild secrets from you! Our botanical world is packed with surprises that'll make you want to grab your gardening gloves and explore. These green (and sometimes not-so-green) wonders prove that the most fascinating life forms might just be growing right under our noses.

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Selaginella lepidophylla can survive complete dehydration for months, looking absolutely dead as a doornail. But add a little water, and within hours it springs back to vibrant green life, like nature's own magic trick. Native Americans called it the "resurrection plant," and it has amazed desert travelers for centuries. It's basically the ultimate comeback kid of the plant world—making your Monday morning coffee revival look like amateur hour.

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California's bristlecone pines make your grandparents look like spring chickens. The oldest known specimen, nicknamed "Methuselah," has been growing for over 4,850 years. That means it was already a teenager when the pyramids were built! These gnarled survivors thrive in harsh, high-altitude conditions that would make most plants throw in the towel faster than you can say "retirement community."

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The Venus flytrap has reflexes that would make a NASCAR driver jealous. When an insect triggers its tiny hairs twice within 20 seconds, SNAP! The trap closes in just one-tenth of a second. Native to the Carolina bogs, this carnivorous charmer gets its nutrients from bugs instead of soil, proving that sometimes you really do need to think outside the pot.

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Over 80 species of fungi light up the forest floor like nature's own Christmas decorations. The foxfire fungus creates an eerie green glow visible on dark nights, helping attract insects for spore dispersal. These bioluminescent beauties have been mystifying forest walkers for centuries.

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Amorphophallus titanum produces the world's smelliest flower, reeking like rotting meat mixed with dirty gym socks. This aromatic assault attracts carrion beetles and flies from miles away, who become unwitting pollinators as they crawl around looking for the "rotting carcass" that doesn't exist. The bloom can reach 10 feet tall and only flowers every few years, making it the botanical equivalent of a once-in-a-lifetime rock concert—if rock concerts smelled like garbage trucks.

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Mimosa pudica, nicknamed the "shy plant," collapses its leaves instantly when touched, as if it's playing dead or having a case of the vapors. This dramatic response happens in seconds and helps protect it from hungry herbivores. It's like having a plant that throws a tantrum every time someone tries to pet it—perfect for those who prefer low-maintenance relationships with their greenery.

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These California giants can live over 3,000 years and grow taller than the Statue of Liberty. The largest, "General Sherman," weighs as much as 10 blue whales and has a trunk so wide that 20 people holding hands couldn't wrap around it. Their bark can be two feet thick—thicker than most apartment walls—and is naturally fire-resistant.

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Starting as a tiny seed dropped by a bird high in a tree canopy, the strangler fig slowly grows downward, wrapping around its host tree like a very patient python. Over decades, it gradually strangles and kills its host, leaving a hollow center where the original tree once stood. It's like the plant kingdom's version of a hostile takeover, except it takes about 50 years to complete the paperwork.

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These African icons look like someone planted them upside-down, with their massive trunks and spindly branches resembling roots reaching for the sky. Baobabs can store up to 32,000 gallons of water in their trunks—enough to fill a swimming pool! Some specimens are over 2,000 years old and so huge that people have carved pubs, prisons, and even bus stops inside their hollow trunks.

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In Oregon's Blue Mountains, a single honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) spans 2,385 acres underground—larger than 1,600 football fields! This fungal giant is estimated to be between 2,000 and 8,000 years old and mostly lives as an invisible network of root-like threads beneath the soil. It's basically nature's internet, connecting and communicating through the forest floor long before we figured out WiFi.

Timeless words

From clay tokens to mind-to-text: 14 writing-tech milestones

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Writing has come a long way since the days of clay tokens and etched stone tablets. What started as simple marks to track trade has evolved into a tool for storytelling, record-keeping, and instant messaging. Along the way, alphabets, paper, printing presses, typewriters, and touchscreens have all helped to shape the way we communicate. Take a look at 14 cultural and technological milestones that brought us to where we are today.

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While individual traces and symbols can be found in earlier cultures, the Sumerians were probably the first civilization to "officially" establish a system that laid the foundation for what we know today as written communication.

Between 8000 and 3500 BCE, clay tokens representing units of goods were used primarily for accounting purposes.

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Between 3500 and 3000 BC, the Sumerians replaced the earlier three-dimensional tokens with two-dimensional pictographic signs.

Like the tokens that came before, this early pictographic script was still used exclusively for accounting purposes—pictographic writing recorded lists of commodities, labor, taxes, and trade.

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Between the years 3000 and 1500 BC, the Sumerians introduced phonetic signs and used them to transcribe the names of individuals. This marked a turning point when writing began to emulate spoken language and, as a result, became applicable to all fields of human knowledge.

It expanded from accounting and administration into law, literature, religion, and science.

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The fourth major evolution in writing came with the invention of what we now recognize as the alphabet. This early version consisted of about two dozen letters, each representing a single spoken sound.

The alphabet perfected the representation of speech. Following ideography, logography, and syllabaries, it marked a further segmentation of meaning into smaller units, enabling the communication of more specific and abstract concepts.

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First known to be used in Ancient Egypt, papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that served as a writing surface, far easier to transport than stone or even clay tablets. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, a wetland sedge abundant in the Nile Delta.

For thousands of years, papyrus was rolled into scrolls for storage. Later in its history, however, it began to be compiled into codices, a format not unlike the modern book.

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In Europe, papyrus was gradually overtaken by parchment due to the latter’s greater durability and strength. Like papyrus, parchment could be produced relatively cheaply, scrolled easily, and transported from points of origin, but unlike papyrus, parchment did not crumble with age and could be reused.

These advantages made parchment the preferred writing medium in both the ancient and medieval worlds. Additionally, because both sides of a parchment sheet could be written on, the development of the modern book became possible.

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Paper, as we know it today, started its days in Ancient China, where court officials recorded for the first time that plant and animal fibers—such as mulberry bark or bamboo—could be processed to produce this new writing medium. From China, the technology spread across Asia, then to the Arab world, and finally to Europe.

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The Greeks and Romans modified the stylus from a tool used to mark clay tablets into one that could hold ink and apply it to other surfaces. Reeds were initially used for this purpose, and eventually, it was discovered that bird feathers could also hold ink, making the quill the preferred writing instrument for many centuries.

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The wooden pencil was an innovative improvement over the stylus because it did not require liquid ink to work. It was also cleaner to use and could be erased.

Early pencils were potentially hazardous since they contained lead, which was not encased in wood, exposing users to lead poisoning. By the 18th century, pencil makers developed a safer manufacturing process that combined powdered graphite with clay, which was then baked, formed into sticks, cut, and glued into wooden casings.

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The ability to spread written communication on a massive scale became a reality when Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press in Germany around 1440.

Primarily used for producing texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events of the second millennium. A single press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to about forty pages by hand printing and just a few by hand copying.

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The first commercial typewriters were introduced in the late 19th century and quickly became indispensable tools for nearly all writing, except for personal handwritten correspondence.

The QWERTY keyboard layout, developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboards used today.

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The age of computers gradually phased out typewriters by introducing the ability to rewrite and modify text in any way imaginable, in real time. Since then, word processors have become the standard software used worldwide for creating and editing text in a digital environment.

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Speech recognition software, also known as voice-to-text, has allowed us to"write" with our voices by dictating into our smartphones whatever we need to record, much like personal secretaries used to do decades ago.

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Researchers are investigating methods to generate written text by "reading" a person’s brain activity. This technology could prove useful for, among other things, helping individuals with physical disabilities communicate more effectively. A breakthrough that could bring science fiction closer to reality!