Extraordinary full-length shot of the 'President': this 3,200-year-old tree is so huge it took 126 photos to show it all

• Tree in Nevada's Sequoia National Park is 3,200 years old and 247 feet tall
• National Geographic captured full-length shot using innovative technique
• Judged on mass, the 'President' is 'likely the biggest' tree on the planet

By KATE LYONS

Meet the ‘President’.

The giant sequoia tree in Nevada’s Sequoia National Park is 3,200 years old, has 2 billion leaves and stands 247 feet (74 metres) tall.

The portrait of the giant tree, taken by National Geographic, is actually a mosaic, made up of 126 photographs in order to capture the stunning full-length shot.

The President is by no means the tallest tree in the world – that honour goes to a California redwood, which stands 379 feet (116 metres) tall – but in terms of mass, it is one of the largest.

‘We know that there are trees that have bigger trunks, but when you add up all of the wood beside the main trunk – all of the limbs, all of the branches, all of the bio-mass above the ground – this tree is likely the biggest,’ said Steve Sillett from Humboldt State University.

The stunning shot of the tree was featured as a five page fold-out in the December 2012 edition of National Geographic.

‘The reason we want to do these portraits – people get it. When they see the tree in its totality without distortion, they gasp,’ said photographer Michael Nichols.

The photographic team captured the pictures using an innovative rigging technique, which was pioneered by Mr Nichols in 2009, when created an 84-image composite of a 300-foot-tall redwood tree.

Giant sequoias live at high elevations and can endure cold, heavy snow and even lightning strikes. They grow in bulk and not as high as coast redwoods.

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Gold in trees leads to hidden deposits

By Rebecca Morelle

Science reporter, BBC World Service

Money might not grow on trees, but scientists have confirmed that gold is found in the leaves of some plants.

Researchers from Australia say that the presence of the particles in a eucalyptus tree's foliage indicates that deposits are buried many metres below.

They believe that the discovery offers a new way to locate the sought-after metal in difficult-to-reach locations.

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Dr Mel Lintern, a geochemist from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), said: "We've found a lot of the easy deposits in Australia and elsewhere in the world as well.

"Now we are trying to tackle finding these more difficult ones that are buried beneath tens of metres of river sediments and sand dunes.

"And the trees are providing us with a method to be able to do this."

Buried treasure

Gold particles have been found around the soils of eucalyptus trees, but the researchers confirmed that the plants were taking in the element.

Using the Australian synchrotron - a vast machine that uses X-rays to probe matter in remarkable detail - they found traces of gold in the leaves, twigs and bark of some trees.

The amounts of the precious metal were tiny.

"We've done a calculation, and found that we need 500 trees growing over a gold deposit to have enough gold in the trees themselves to make a gold ring," said Dr Lintern.

However, the presence of the particles pointed to greater riches buried more than 30m (100ft) below.

Dr Lintern said: "We believe that the trees are acting like a hydraulic pump. They are bringing life-giving water from their roots, and in so doing, they are taking smaller dissolved gold particles up through the vascular system into the foliage."

Currently, the metal is found in outcrops, where the ore appears at the surface, or it is detected through exploratory drilling.

But the researchers said that analysing vegetation could offer a better method to find untapped gold deposits.

Dr Lintern said: "Not only do we believe it is a way of stretching the exploration dollar further, because exploring for these deposits can be quite expensive, it also minimises the damage to the environment because we are taking a very small sample from the trees themselves, as well as the leaves and twigs on the ground."

The researchers said the technique could also be used to find other minerals such as iron, copper and lead in other parts of the world.

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Pål Hermansen's photography comes from visits to a 60-year-old car scrapyard in central Sweden, where he found a thriving habitat of animals, plants and insects. This birch tree has grown to substantial dimensions inside the old Volkswagen, demonstrating the real power of nature. The wrecked vehicles often act as greenhouses for the plants, making them grow faster and bigger than in nature.

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