How a devastating forest fire revealed a tree as close to fireproof as a tree can get

[LiberalArkie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/03/how-a-devastating-forest-fire-revealed-a-tree-as-close-to-fireproof-as-a-tree-can-get/



The Moya brothers were tree experts — one was a botanist, the other an environmental engineer. But they were also tree lovers. So when a fire raged through an experimental plot of trees they were studying in the summer of 2012, their hearts sunk.

“On our way to what we knew would be a Dante-esque scene during that tragic summer, we felt deep sadness at the thought of losing a plot of such value to the conservation of biodiversity,” Bernabé Moya, the botanist, told the BBC.

Indeed, their 50,000-acre plot in Andilla, Spain looked like something out of “Inferno.” Vast expanses of oaks, pines and junipers had been reduced to ash and rubble. Once-verdant hillsides were gray-brown and barren.

But amid the devastation, they saw a sign of hope: a stand of 946 Mediterranean cypress trees, each taller than a two story house, that formed a perfectly square patch of green in the scorched landscape.

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[underahedgerow]

1. I have a love/hate relationship with the Med Cypress. On one hand they are lovely additions

to a landscape vista with their tall, obelisk shape. But if they're not maintained they become bulky and miss-shapen and off balance; get brown and bald spots and shed pins like the dickens. They are also very high polluters and are really really terrible to be near for anyone with allergies and asthma.

But when they're young, they're so pretty and evocative..... But they make me nuts, lol....

I'll put young ones in, but love ripping out the old ones and replacing them.

Giant Sequoias are also fire proof, but not so good in the landscaping! Stunning and majestic in the woods however.

[reddread]

3. yes indeed

when we moved into our house, I developed seasonal asthma. took a long time to realize it is the
neighbor's two cypresses right near our fence and front door making my life miserable.

[randome]

2. I welcome the ascension of our coniferous overlords.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]