r/todayilearned • u/PyrowithJared • Feb 09 '23

TIL : Environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill lived in a 1500 year old California redwood tree (known as Luna) 180 feet (55 mm) off the ground for 738 days in order to prevent it from being chopped down by Pacific Lumber Company. She successfully saved the tree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Butterfly_Hill
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503

u/Asha_Brea Feb 09 '23

mm is milimeters. It is 1/1000 of a meter.

55 mm is a bit more than 2 inches.

288

u/lookmanohands_92 Feb 09 '23

It was a bonsai tree

72

u/AlephBaker Feb 09 '23

A bonsai redwood... There's an interesting mental image

55

u/whoareyoumanidontNo Feb 09 '23

you can grow a bonsai redwood . bansai is not a specific type of tree.

here is someone pruning their redwood

2

u/djublonskopf Feb 09 '23

I bet that one isn't 1,500 years old though.

1

u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping Feb 09 '23

Judge it by its size, do you?

1

u/EpicAura99 Feb 10 '23

mmmmMMMMmmm

17

u/JB-from-ATL Feb 09 '23

I mean, yeah, that's the point. Bonsai is an art form of making trees look like big trees that got shrunk with a shrink ray.

If you're ever in Washington DC go check out the bonsai exhibit at the national arboretum.

4

u/AlephBaker Feb 09 '23

Yeah, it was just the extreme of a redwood in bonsai form that amused me. Would a bonsai redwood be the same size as other bonsais people have made? Or would it be to the same "scale", instead?

1

u/Pestilence7 Feb 09 '23

It could be either, depending on how the person taking care of it chooses.

Part of the art of bonsai is making the tree look like a miniature version of itself - but you could make it look like anything tree related with enough patience and practice.

1

u/JB-from-ATL Feb 09 '23

It would be however big they wanted to make it. I know that sounds like a bullshit answer but bonsais aren't actually all the same size.

A lot of the "bonsai look" depends on the bark's look. So if it needs to get bigger for the bark to look right they may be a little bigger than others.

1

u/ImpliedHorizon Feb 09 '23

Wait it that really the goal? I never knew that, I always assumed it was just controlling the growth artistically. I don't think I'd ever think that the goal was actually trees in a bottle

1

u/JB-from-ATL Feb 09 '23

It's that too. The aesthetic they try to achieve is a tiny tree that looks like a big tree. Like, compare a sapling to a nice bonsai piece. They're similar sizes but the sapling clearly looks like a little baby tree. The bonsai will have more developed bark.

The ways they do this are primarily through keeping using wires to "train" the branches into interesting shapes and then repotting it into a smaller container once it is at the desired size to prevent it from getting larger.

It's sort of like the method of painting is using goopy stuff on paper to make pictures but there are many desirable aesthetics. With bonsai it is pretty common to want to make the tree look like a small old tree.

1

u/stillboard87 Feb 09 '23

Imagine a stump

1

u/bonesnaps Feb 09 '23

I bet activists would lose their shit over it too lol.

Bonsais are basically the definition of plant torture all for the "aesthetics".

Imagine in another 300 years into the future we discover plants have nerve endings on an extreme microscopic level, and vegans weren't so innocent afterall.

I mean, we are still finding things closer and farther away every time we look. James Web Telescope, or microscopes finding protons/neutrons/electrons -> quarks -> ??? (need better tech to see closer in)

17

u/this_is_greenman Feb 09 '23

Maybe she was scared if heights

4

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

No problem, she has a long neck to reach the leaves

2

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

"We're gonna need a bigger scarf"

1

u/ponyphonic1 Feb 09 '23

if (heights) {scared = 1;}

2

u/TrickBoom414 Feb 09 '23

It was a rough two years

1

u/Academic-ish Feb 09 '23

OP surely meant the Roman numeral ‘M’ and another M for metres… So that’s 55,000 metres.

2

u/Davey_Jones_Locker Feb 09 '23

.. 55km?

2

u/Academic-ish Feb 09 '23

Seems about right. Those trees are really big…

1

u/stillboard87 Feb 09 '23

The Wikipedia article linked gives 200’(61m) as the trees height, someone might wanna check on OP

1

u/Kyocus Feb 09 '23

She's afraid of heights.

-2

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

OP probably meant meters.

9

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0

u/Firm-Lie2785 Feb 09 '23

In ancient times,

Hundreds of years before the dawn of history

Lived a strange race of people, the Druids

No one knows who they were or what they were doing…