Strangest Looking Forests On The Planet

Mother nature's a mad scientist!

Published 10 years ago

Mother nature's a mad scientist!

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Native to southern Chile, the Monkey Puzzle Tree is considered a living fossil, cultivated for its wood and edible seeds. sadly, in recent years the global population of these trees has dwindled, and is now considered endangered as of 2013.

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This incredible forest looks a great deal more like a desert if you ask me. The camel thorn trees in Deadvlei sprouted after an intense rain some 900 years ago, however this water evaporated shortly thereafter, killing all the trees. That dry climate prevented the trees from decaying, which means that they are not actually petrified, just turned black from the sun over the centuries.

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The Dancing Kaliningrad Forest, Baltic Sea
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Known either as the Dancing Forest or the Drunken Forest by the locals, these trees on the Curonian Spit in the Baltic Sea look like have the appearance that a higher power tried to tie them all into knots.

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Wollemi Forest, New South Wales
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Arguably the least bizarre looking forest in the bunch, but the Wollemi Forest in New South Wales is unusual for a completely different reason: It is the only known home of the Wollemi Pine, which was thought to have been extinct for over 30 million years.
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Sunken Forest, Kazakhstan

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This strange sight at Lake Kaindy in Kazakhstan was due to an earthquake in 1911, which caused a landslide and resulted in a natural dam. The spruce trees that were once part of a valley are now partially submerged, with their dried tops standing above water, and their almost perfectly preserved lower halves below the surface.
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Monkey Puzzle Forest, Chile
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Deadvlei Forest, Namibia

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The Great Banyan, India. All 3,300 trees of this forest are actually the aerial roots of one single 250 year old Banyan tree. Perhaps more amazing still, the main trunk of the massive tree was removed in 1925, but the remains of the tree somehow live on, sprawling today over an area of 4 acres.
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Son Doong Forest, Vietnam

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Located on the border between Laos and Vietnam, what makes this forest so unique is that it exists entirely underground, inside the largest known cave in the world. To reach it, you have to rappel down a steep drop into the cave, which had kept it completely untouched by man until 2009.
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Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar
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These 800 year old trees can store up to 31,700 gallons of water hence the swollen trunk and are all that remains of the lush forest that once stood there.

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The Jabuticaba, also referred to as Brazilian Grape Trees, grow these creepy looking berries along the entirety of their trunks. The purple and white fleshy fruit is harvested and eaten raw, or made into drinks and preserves.
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Jabuticaba Forest, Brazil
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Every year, these rolling hills in Xinjiang explode into a sea of pink and white. This signifies the beginning of the fruiting season, while also transforming the landscape into something to pretty for words.
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Yili Apricot Valley, China
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The trees of the Crooked Bush in Canada are all over the map from a design standpoint. Again, why they look this way is somewhat of a mystery.
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The Crooked Bush, Saskatchewan
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The Rainbow Eucalyptus is found in patches throughout the Northern Hemisphere. However, unlike any other tree in the world, the Rainbow Eucalyptus bark undergoes a spectacular array of color changes as it ages. Then it is shed, and the process starts over.

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Rainbow Eucalyptus Forest, Maui
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They call Socotra Island the most alien landscape on the planet, and its easy to see why. Between the bizarrely flat-topped Dragons Blood Trees, and the chubby Cucumber Trees, its clear that plants are incredibly diverse on this island off the coast of Yemen.
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Dragons Blood Forest, Socotra Island