Deciduous Trees Facts

The trees, most often, characterized by shedding of leaves in a particular season every year are known as deciduous trees. Some popular deciduous tree species include oak, maple, birches, poplar, hickory, ash, etc. These trees are normally found in the deciduous forest biomes spanning the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Facts About Deciduous Trees

Deciduous trees are found all over the world. Some species of deciduous trees are often used to decorate estate homes, while some add to the landscape of dense forests in the tropics. There are basically too many deciduous trees facts to count, below mentioned are a few of them.

Regions
Although deciduous trees are found all over the world, the two main regions where deciduous trees are found in abundance are temperate deciduous forest and tropical and subtropical deciduous forests. Deciduous trees grow in regions wherein climatic conditions have great seasonable temperature variance.

Foliage Shedding
Foliage shedding by deciduous trees can be typically attributed to water shortage. As the water available for the tree is minimal, the tree sheds the leaves to avoid dehydrating. Water shortage is faced in dry season, wherein the ground water dries up, as well as in winter season, wherein the ground water is frozen, and hence deciduous trees are known to shed leaves during these specific seasons.

Seasonal Shedding
The period of shedding of leaves in deciduous trees is often observed to coincide with the seasons, for instance plants from the regions with cool climate tend to shed in winter, while plants from the tropical areas tend to shed during dry season. The leaves finally regrow in spring and this cycle continues throughout the life of the tree.

Food Storage
During spring, deciduous trees hardly face water or food shortage. In fact, a healthy full grown oak tree can suck around 50 gallons of water through their roots everyday. But food or water shortage does come into picture in winter and dry seasons. To cope up with this, the deciduous trees remove all the nitrogen and carbon from the leaves before they shed the leaves and store it in the form of proteins in the vacuoles of parenchyma.

Long Life
Some species of deciduous trees like the oak trees are known to live long, with some even crossing the 200 year mark. In fact, the Wye oak on the eastern shore of Maryland in the United States is believed to be around 400 years. This oak stands 105 ft tall, measures 32 ft in circumference and sports a crown spread of 158 ft.

Gigantic Size
These trees can grow up to 100 ft in height, with some specimens easily crossing 120 ft. They also cover a large area, with some deciduous trees types sporting a spread of 60 ft on an average, which can even increase to 150 ft, though in rare cases.

Fast Growth
Yet another prominent deciduous tree fact is the growth rate of some of the deciduous tree species. These group of trees has one of the fastest growing shade trees in the world - the weeping willow. These trees grows at a tremendous speed, and can gain a height of around 10 ft within a year. Read more on weeping willow tree facts.

Several Uses
Many deciduous trees are used by humans for various purposes. One of the rarest oak species, the Cork oak, is called so because the wood of this tree is used to make the bottle corks of some of the finest wine bottles in the world, while the British Quercus Robur is the first choice for landscape architecture around an estate home. Maple tree is widely known for the maple syrup - a sweetener made from the sap of maple tree.

Also read

• Facts About Oak Trees.
• Maple Tree Facts.

By now, questions such as what are deciduous trees and the queries related to them in your mind must have been answered. Deciduous trees in themselves are marvelous creations of nature which add to the elegance of landscape with the array of colors ranging from various shades of yellow and orange to golden crown. Several deciduous trees facts are known to mankind, but may be there are a whole lot of them yet to be discovered. After all every tree in itself has a world of surprises woven around it.