In the botanical garden in Rio, Imperial Palms line an avenue. By creating their own trail of enormous trees, the organizers hope to raise people’s awareness of their surroundings.
Botanists are anxious that everyone supports the struggle to conserve the nation’s distinctive woods, both inside and outside the Amazon. These trees, as well as the species that depend on them, are threatened.
Where the tallest trees were was determined by botanists who calculated the carbon content of the garden by looking at 4633 trees, bushes, and palm trees.
The botanists employed lidar technology, which stands for “light detecting and ranging,” to catalog the volume of the trees.
It is used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US and is a combined laser, scanner and GPS receiver which generates accurate 3D information.
Marcus Nadruz is one of the botanists at Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden explains how computer-aided mapping can help measure the trees.
“Depending on the colour, the more yellow, the higher is the tree. You can see the yellow colour much more intensely here, which is precisely the location of the highest tree in the botanical garden, measuring almost fifty metres.”
The garden was originally created in 1808 to acclimatise plant species from other continents.
Brazil was looking for new crops at the time to help the country’s economy recover from the depletion of its gold reserves.
Rafaella Forzza, a different botanist, spends a lot of time in the Amazon where she got to know the red angelim, also known as Dinizia excelsa, which is the largest tree that was just just discovered in Brazil.
Only last September 2022 was the largest tree, reaching 88 meters, finally reached by land after being originally located using lidar four years earlier.
“Once you reach the foot of the tree, it is hard to see, because the canopy of the forest obstructs the top of the tree, you cannot see,” she explains.
“The branches of the angelim or the sumauma begin to branch out above the normal canopy of the forest.”
The grand imperial palms are the second highest trees in the garden. One original palm tree has reached 48.1 metres in height.
The garden is also home to a Tasmanian eucalyptus, known commonly as a blue gum which is 39.5 metres tall. It can reach up to 45 metres in its natural habitat.
Many of these trees are threatened, the samauma is used to make plywood and the angelim is Brazil’s most exported tree.
With Earth Day 2023 falling on April 22nd the botanists are hoping these giants will not go unnoticed.