They’re perfectly conical, with long draping boughs and a citrusy fragrance: Your search for the perfect Christmas tree ends here. Unfortunately, you can’t chop down any of the 132 historically protected cedars that line a street outside of Los Angeles called Christmas Tree Lane.
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We collectively use about a million plastic bags a minute, a figure that will peak during next week’s holiday rush. As you’re sitting around in a post-Christmas funk next week, consider following the lead of Japanese artist Yuken Teruya, who carves tiny, perfect trees out of the flimsy walls of old shopping bags.
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You’ve already gone to all the trouble of felling a tree and cleaning off the branches. Who wants to spend even more time hacking it into useable chunks of firewood? That inconvenience is clearly what inspired designers Michiel Martens and Roel de Boer to create the Spruce Stove, a wood burning heater that swallows trees whole.
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Every parent’s favorite line about how money doesn’t grow on trees just became a little more irrelevant, thanks to a fascinating find down under. Researchers in Australia recently found gold—yes, real gold—in eucalyptus trees growing in the outback.
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How do people manage to write the neatest, most compact code to make programs super-small and lightweight? Well, there are many ways—but one of the most common is to use trees. Upside down trees, to be precise.
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The 2,500-year-old Ankerwycke Yew, which sits near a medieval nunnery in Southern England, has borne witness to some serious history. It shaded the King of England during the signing of the Magna Carta. It was a favorite meeting spot of Anne Boleyn and King Henry. And it’s likely going to see a whole lot more, after the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive finishes cloning it.
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You could see Philippe Handford’s weird tree sculptures as somber reflections on life and the natural world and blah blah blah trees are alive, man. That’s fair, but really, this art is kind of funny too.
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Why hide your toilet paper stock in a cabinet that guests will just have to hunt through when they run out? This stylish laquered steel tree can be mounted to the wall near your loo where it will store up to 14 extra rolls in plain sight, without looking like an eyesore. More »
The intricate pruning and maintenance needed to create a miniature bonsai tree takes years of patience and diligence. But artist Ken To has found a shortcut. Instead of plants, he makes his bonsai trees from intricately twisted and curled wire. So they don’t require any maintenance whatsoever, and will never wither and die. More »
It turns out that decorating your Christmas tree isn’t necessarily all about taste. Mathematicians at the University of Sheffield in the UK have developed a formula for the perfect way to deck the halls. More specifically, what ratio of ornaments to lights to tinsel will make your tree most aesthetically pleasing. More »
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