FOREST

FOREST

1.Our planet Earth was formed in the solar system around 4.5 billion year ago. The oldest fossils found on the earth are about 3.5 billion years old and are bacterial microfossils.

2.The oldest known living thing on Earth is a tree, 4,700 years old, which is located in the USA.

It was growing when the Egyptians built the pyramids.

3.An area of forest, the size of a football field, is being destroyed every second on earth.

4.In 2004, an area of about 26,000 sq. km of the Amazon  rain-forest   was destroyed. This is about the size of Belgium! 

5. Rainforest's  cover only 7% of the land area an Earth but contain more than 50% of the trees.

In fact, 1 hectare of the   rain-forest may contain more than 600 species of trees, while all the forests of the USA and Canada together, contain only about 700 species.

6.More than half of the total number of species on Earth live in tropical rain-forest. 

7.Madagascar is home to a rain-forest where 60% of it's twelve thousand different plant species are unique to that island.

8.In peninsular Malaysia, more tree species are found in it's one hundred twenty five acres of tropical forests than in entire North America.

9.The   rainforest's in Indonesia and Malaysia are home to the largest flower in the world-the giant rafflesia-which weighs up to seven kg and has petals which span almost 1  metre. The plant gives out the smell of rotting flesh which attracts certain flies that than help pollination.

10. Some species of trees produce natural anti-freeze chemicals which keep them from freezing in temperatures up to -40  degree  Celsius!

11.A thirty meter tree with two lac leaves can suck up forty three thousand liters of water from the earth  and breathe it into the air in just one growing season.

12.Only plants produce enough new oxygen to support life on Earth. In one year, an average tree inhales twelve kg of carbon dioxide and exhales enough oxygen to keep a family of four breathing for a year.

13.One acre of trees can absorb about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide from the air in one year.

14.To lock up the eight billion tons of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) released into the atmosphere each year, would require planting a forest four times the area of USA.

15.Just three trees planted around an average-sized home can lower the air-conditioning bill by up-to fifty percent.

16. Rain-forests generate more than forty percent of the world's oxygen.

17.About thirty percent of the carbon spewed out into the atmosphere comes directly from the continued burning of the  rainforest's. this carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide leads to the greenhouse effect.

18.At least 10% of all the medicines are made either wholly or in part from plants!

19.The demand of herbal medicine has been growing at the rate of about 10% every year for the pat decade or so in the West. Most of the plants used for these medicines are harvested from the wild, which has led scientists to believe that about five thousand plant species may face the risk of extinction. Among the threatened plants are tetu lakha, a tree found in southern India which is used for anti cancer drugs in Europe and an Indian root called saw-wart which is used in the cure of skin disorders.

20.The National Cancer Institute of the USA has identified about 3000 species of plants that have anti-cancer properties. Out of these, over seventy percent are from the tropics, including the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar which is used to treat leukaemia in children.

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