Awesome Trees

Bring the scents of the great outdoors into any room with these wonderful fragrance sprays from Juniper Ridge. Each bottle uses essential oils harvested from reclaimed trees removed by U.S. National Park forest management to help keep forest fires from spreading. Choose from Sierra Forest, Redwood Mist, Desert Cedar, Cascade Forest, or Mexican White Sage.

With the holidays upon us, the fragrance of pine is in the air. After buying some pine cones from the market, Boxlapse plucked and planted one of their seeds to see if it would grow into a tree. This captivating time-lapse footage condenses 300 days of growth to about two minutes. Perhaps it’ll be big enough to use as a Christmas tree in a few years.

Budding artists are often encouraged to draw trees for quick sketching success. Drawing Trees branches out from that lesson with 30 meditative guided drawings of trees, leaves, and other identifiers. Trace the images with a pen or pencil to grow your skills and knowledge of tree species from Black Walnut to White Ash.

Visual artist Alex Le Guillou created these glorious digital sequences of trees using dots to represent their complex, organic shapes. He used LIDAR scans of the Tasmanian forest and digitally manipulated the 3D models to create this incredible footage. Created for the documentary The Giants: The Extraordinary Story of Bob Brown and the Forest.

Exploring Alternatives takes us on a tour of one of the coolest tiny houses we’ve ever seen. Created by Repère Boréal, the Uhu is a 200-sq.ft. steel home that floats 40 feet in the air. After ascending a spiral staircase, occupants cross a bridge in the trees to enter the 1-bedroom home. Inside, it has a kitchen, bathroom, and a desk.

French filmmaker Remi Molettee is known for their wildly inventive generative digital art. In the AI-enabled short film, Symbiosis, Remi transformed dancers the Ebinum Brothers into living, moving tree roots. As their bodies move and intertwine, they appear as wooden surrogates for blood vessels and veins.

Located high atop a mountain in California, a bristlecone pine tree has survived longer than any other living thing on Earth. The tree, known as Methuselah, has defied all odds to outlive billions of people despite its lack of nutrients and minimal water and oxygen. David from MinuteEarth explains why the tree has lived for so long.

Most of us celebrated Christmas with a real tree or a store-bought fake one. Sean Hodgins made his tree out of light. He created the electronic tree using a triangular bar rigged with LEDs that spins at high speed to create the illusion. It looks amazing, but it’s dangerous enough that he stands behind a blast shield to use it.

Like last year, maker Xyla Foxlin and Joe from BPS.Space wanted to celebrate the holidays with a rocket-powered Christmas tree. But this year’s launch didn’t quite go according to plan, and the flaming yule tree literally went sideways and turned into a missile that could have easily taken out Santa and his sleigh of reindeer.

Bonsai trees are typically living plants that require an immense amount of care and precision pruning. These talented artists show us how they make bonsais that require no watering – using thousands of strands of stiff metal wire to create their intricate designs. We wonder how long the process takes to do in real time.

This three-in-one puzzle box features detailed woodcut prints by artist Bryan Nash Gill. He created large-scale relief prints from cross-sections of trees by pressing the rings until they transferred from tree to paper. Each 300-piece puzzle has different colors on the bottom to simplify sorting.

Aussie developer Matt Newell is working on an interactive plaything called Lushfoil Photography Sim. Matt’s goal is to envelop players in the most realistic grass, trees, and other environmental elements across detailed landscapes. From the looks of this French Alps demo, we think he’s on the right track. There’s an 8K version here.

The American Museum of Natural History and OrigamiUSA celebrate the holidays with a truly unique Christmas tree. The 13-foot tree has been decorated with over 1,000 handcrafted origami models inspired by gems, minerals, sharks, whales, and dinosaurs on exhibit throughout the museum. Photos by D. Finnin / AMNH.

Looking for a unique idea for a Christmas tree? Woodworker TyeMadeIt shows off a tree he made by cutting 288 wooden stakes to different lengths then stacked them on a pole and twisted them. Since making the one shown in the video, he’s been commissioned to make custom ones for clients. Build video here.

Backyard Racing takes us on a glorious Hot Wheels ride through the colorful fall foliage. The treetop track took a month to build and incorporates jumps, loops, tunnels, a motorized gondola, boosters, and a water feature complete with a car-eating shark.

The pulp that goes into making paper comes from trees. But there’s a big difference between the way a paper mill churns out bleached white sheets, and the steps required to make paper from scratch. How To Make Everything walks us through the process. It took about 28 hours of labor to produce their first crude sheet.

While TierZoo usually focuses their analysis on animals, this time they’ve turned their attention to something a little more green. As part of the #teamtrees fundraiser to get 20 million trees planted, they decided to see which trees have the best overall stats.

Based on Kevin Feeser’s awesome fan submission to LEGO Ideas, this 3,036 piece set (#21318) is truly epic. It features a 14″ tall treehouse setting with lots of great details in its three floating cabins. It comes with both spring and fall foliage elements, made from sustainable sugarcane-based plastics. Drops 8/1/19 for $200.

Californian sequoia trees have been known to grow to heights over 400 feet. But that’s about where they top out. TED-Ed’s Valentin Hammoudi explores some of the biological and physical constraints which may mean that’s the tallest a tree ever could be.

While we prefer the aroma of a fresh cut Christmas tree, sometimes it’s nice to not have to deal with all of those needles on the floor. The Science Channel and Insider take us inside a factory that makes oversize fake Xmas trees to show us how they come together.

We like to imagine a family of Ewoks living in LEGO builder Kevin’s awesome treehouse. The model features over 2600 pieces, and took hundreds of hours to design. We’d love to see it turned into a kit we can all buy. If you do too, show your support on LEGO Ideas.

Hand Tool Rescue shared this chainsaw-wielding, wheeled machine that can be placed around the trunk of a tree, then climbs its way towards the top, trimming off branches as it goes. We’re not sure how knows when to come back down. Original footage via Bidone1967.

To help preserve the diversity of stone fruit, artist Sam Van Aken has produced these very special trees capable of growing peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots and even almonds, by grafting numerous trees together. More here.