Ever Heard Of Suicide Palm Or Underground Orchid Or Baseball Plant Or Bleeding Tooth Plant Or Living Stone Plant Or Golf Ball Plant!!!

Find out the details of these amazing plants

 

Underground Orchid

This unusual orchid spends its entire life underground. It even flowers underground, in late May and early June, producing more than a hundred cream to reddish flowers, and a strong fragrance.

It only lives in the Broom bush shrub land in western Australia. It lacks chlorophyll so cannot draw energy from sunlight like most plants. Instead it takes nutrients from the roots of broom bush, by parasitizing the fungi associated with it.

There are thought to be fewer than 50 plants. The species has not been assessed by the IUCN, but Western Australia classes it as critically endangered.

Bleeding tooth fungus Or Hydnellum Peckii

Hydnellum peckii is a special type of fungi that produce blood or juice like fluid on its surface. This plant is also known as ‘bleeding tooth fungus’. It is the Scarlet pigment causes blood like the color on the fluid of this plant. This strange plant mainly found across North America and Europe. It is edible, but the blood like fluid is extremely bitter in taste.

Hydnellum peckii has an unpleasant odor. The color of fluids on Hydnellum peckii can be varied as orange or pink. 

Powerful Plants That Can Purify The Air In Your Home  

Living stones Or Lithop

Lithop can be described as living stones, a plant that exactly look like stones or pebbles. In fact, its unique shape causes by the merging of two separate leaves at the outer edges of the plant. The leaves of the lithop plant grow in the very rainy season.This extremely strange plant species mainly found in South Africa.
 
The thick pebble like leaves is main visible parts of lithops. Unlike other plants the leaves of lithop are in brown or gray. Lithops can be found in various colors like white, gray, pink and purple. Lithops will live for more than 50 year

Some plants release oxygen in night! Truth or Myth! 

Golf Plant

Found only in the mountains of Queretaro in Mexico, the golf ball is a small white-ish cactus that looks, you've guessed it, like a golf ball. Its beautiful pink flowers have made it popular among horticulturists, so many wild cacti are illegally collected. As a result, the population has dropped more than 95% over the last 20 years.

Welwitschia Mirabilis

Welwitschia Mirabilis is a unique plant that only found in the desert of Namibia. The estimated lifespan of this strange looking plant is between 500 and 1500 years. It can survive within many extreme weather conditions. The most interesting thing about Welwitschia is the plant only has two leaves that grow continuously over time.  This strange species also have separate male and female plants.

Suicide Palm

The suicide palm is a gigantic palm found only in remote parts of north-west Madagascar. It lives for about 50 years, then flowers only once, and dies soon after.

Suicide palms were discovered in 2005, by a cashew plantation manager during a family outing, and formally described in 2008. With trunks reaching 18m in height, and huge fan-leaves up to 5m across, the palms can be seen on Google Earth. There are only about 90 in the wild.

The only Carbon Negative Country In The World!  

Baseball Plant Or Euphorbia obesa

It is generally known as euphorbia obesa native to South Africa. The plant has exactly the same shape of a baseball. It is an unbranched plant with an average height of 20 cm. The special species of baseball plant is protected by national nature conservation as it is very rare in the world.
 
Male and female flowers of euphorbia obesa grow on different plants.Baseball plants are quite toxic, makes severe skin problems. 

Venus Flytrap

Venus flytrap also known as dionaea muscipula is a carnivorous plant. It means the plant consumes small insects and animals as food. Venus flytraps can be found in the Eastern Carolia especially in wet inhabitants. Venus flytrap has special lobes to trap the prey animals.

The venus flytrap close its lobes immediately when the insects comes in contact with the plant.This plant will digest the insects within a time span of 10 days.The leaves venus flytrap opens its lobes widely to catch the prey

Largest Flower Is It One Weighing 24 Pounds Or One With Height Of 10 Feet!  

Pitcher Plant

The pitcher plant is another type of carnivorous plant native to South East Asia. The plant has an attractive deep red color. The attractive smell of pitcher plants helps it to easily catch the prey. The insects and small animals become main preys of pitcher plants. It is said to be some species of pitcher plant can even consume mice.

The deep cavity that filled with special fluid help to catch the prey.The plant has most mysterious leaf structure and features special digestive enzymes

World's Largest Tree Covers 18,918 Square Meters Of Land!

Amazing Unknown Facts About Tree's!

Interestingly These Facts Are True And Proven

 

We Bring You 7 Such Facts Which May Change Your The Way You Think About Tree's

 

 

7)They’re Just As Stressed As We Are

Trees are very sensitive to their environments. The disruption of an ecosystem—whether caused by man or nature—can greatly stress a tree. In urban environments, poor soil quality, overcrowded tree planters, and competition for water between different plants are the most common stress to trees. If not treated, such stress can inhibit a tree’s growth or photosynthesis cycle. So, the next time you see a stressed tree, help it out! Keep your soil nutrient-rich and give your trees plenty of space to breath.

6)Single tree produce 2,721 kilograms (5,998.78 pounds) of oxygen per year 

 

A single 30-meter-tall mature tree can absorb as much as 22.7 kilograms (50 pounds) of carbon dioxide in a year, which over it’s lifetime is approximately the

same amount as would be produced by an average car being driven 41,500 kilometers (25,787 miles). The same tree could also produce 2,721 kilograms (5,998.78 pounds) of oxygen in a year, which is enough to support at least two people. According to the University of Melbourne, because trees grow faster the older they get, their capacity for photosynthesis and carbon sequestration increases as they age.

5)A single tree supports 284 species of insects

You probably knew that trees were good for wildlife but did you know just how good? For example, the common English Oak (Quercus robur) can support hundreds of different species, including 284 species of insect and 324 taxa (species, sub-species, and varieties) of lichens living directly on the tree. These in turn provide food for numerous birds and small mammals. The acorns of oak trees (which don’t usually appear until the tree is around 40 years old) are food for dozens of species, including wild boar (and now more commonly pigs), jays, pigeons, pheasants, ducks, squirrels, mice, badgers, and deer.

4)A single tree has cooling effect of 10 AC

Most people know that trees near buildings can raise property prices by an average of 14 percent in the U.K. and as much as up to 37 percent in the U.S. But trees can also have an impact on the energy used for heating and cooling a building, reducing air conditioning costs by as much as 30 percent and saving 20 to 50 percent on energy for heating. This is because as well as providing shade, a large tree can also transpire as much as 378.5 liters (100 gallons) of water into the air per day. This has a cooling effect roughly equivalent to 10 single room-sized air conditioning units operating 20 hours a day!

3)Did trees really kill the dinosaurs?

There is a theory that the evolution of tall, woody, flowering trees (angiosperms) might have played a pivotal role in the extinction of the dinosaurs. It is believed, by some, that the speed at which flowering plants evolved on Earth (possibly spurred on by rapid climate change) occurred too quickly for dinosaurs to adapt their diets. Flowering plants are better at producing oxygen. With the rapid increase in flowering plants, scientists suggest that the metabolism of large herbivorous dinosaurs might have increased to the point that they could not eat enough food to sustain their increased metabolism. Well this theory is hard to believe. But not this one Powerful Plants That Can Purify The Air In Your Home

2)Tree's communicate for self defense 

Trees are masters of both self-defense and communication. Scientists have found that when attacked by insects, trees can flood their leaves with chemicals called phenolics. These noxious compounds are distasteful to tree pests and can even impede their growth. What’s amazing is that once a tree is attacked, it will “signal" to other nearby trees to also start their self-defense, before they are attacked! Methods of communication include releasing chemicals into the wind and possibly even sending chemical or electric signals through the michorizal network of roots (a network of shared fungus fibers). 

1)The oldest living thing on Earth is 80,000 years old 

Although already discussed in one of the earlier post in detail 

Click on this link for detail's 

The oldest living organism on Earth is believed to be the “Pando" colony of Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) in Utah, also known as the Trembling Giant. The colony of trees covers some 41.7 hectares (103 acres) and is estimated to weigh nearly 6,000,000 kilograms (6,600 tons), making it also the heaviest known organism. Being a clonal colony, the tree “trunks" all share identical genetic makeup. It is estimated that parts of the inter-connected root stock that links the colony together is in excess of 80,000 years old! 

The only Carbon Negative Country In The World!  

This Man Bought 28,120-acre of Forest in USA to conserve it!  

Some plants release oxygen in night! Truth or Myth  

 

Benifits Of "Shinrin-Yoku" Or "Forest Bathing"

Japanese coined a term for recognizing health benifits of spending time outside in nature, green spaces, and, specifically, forests, "Shinrin-Yoku" Or "Forest Bathing"

Research reveals that environments can increase or reduce our stress, which in turn impacts our bodies. What you are seeing, hearing, experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood, but how your nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are working.

The stress of an unpleasant environment can cause you to feel anxious, or sad, or helpless. This in turn elevates your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension and suppresses your immune system. A pleasing environment reverses that.

And regardless of age or culture, humans find nature pleasing. In one study cited in the book Healing Gardens, researchers found that more than two-thirds of people choose a natural setting to retreat to when stressed.   

Health Benefits From Forests

Refer to reference list below to see links to specific studies on these benefits.

    Boosts immune system
    Lowers blood pressure
    Reduces stress
    Improves mood
    Increases ability to focus, even in children with ADHD
    Accelerates recovery from surgery or illness
    Increases energy level
    Improves sleep

Nature heals

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. It may even reduce mortality, according to scientists such as public health researchers Stamatakis and Mitchell.

Research done in hospitals, offices, and schools has found that even a simple plant in a room can have a significant impact on stress and anxiety.

Nature soothes

In addition, nature helps us cope with pain. Because we are genetically programmed to find trees, plants, water, and other nature elements engrossing, we are absorbed by nature scenes and distracted from our pain and discomfort.

This is nicely demonstrated in a now classic study of patients who underwent gallbladder surgery; half had a view of trees and half had a view of a wall. According to the physician who conducted the study, Robert Ulrich, the patients with the view of trees tolerated pain better, appeared to nurses to have fewer negative effects, and spent less time in a hospital. More recent studies have shown similar results with scenes from nature and plants in hospital rooms. 

Nature restores

One of the most intriguing areas of current research is the impact of nature on general wellbeing. In one study in Mind, 95% of those interviewed said their mood improved after spending time outside, changing from depressed, stressed, and anxious to more calm and balanced. Other studies by Ulrich, Kim, and Cervinka show that time in nature or scenes of nature are associated with a positive mood, and psychological wellbeing, meaningfulness, and vitality.

Furthermore, time in nature or viewing nature scenes increases our ability to pay attention. Because humans find nature inherently interesting, we can naturally focus on what we are experiencing out in nature. This also provides a respite for our overactive minds, refreshing us for new tasks.

In another interesting area, Andrea Taylor’s research on children with ADHD shows that time spent in nature increases their attention span later.   

Nature connects

According to a series of field studies conducted by Kuo and Coley at the Human-Environment Research Lab, time spent in nature connects us to each other and the larger world. Another study at the University of Illinois suggests that residents in Chicago public housing who had trees and green space around their building reported knowing more people, having stronger feelings of unity with neighbors, being more concerned with helping and supporting each other, and having stronger feelings of belonging than tenants in buildings without trees. In addition to this greater sense of community, they had a reduced risk of street crime, lower levels of violence and aggression between domestic partners, and a better capacity to cope with life’s demands, especially the stresses of living in poverty.

This experience of connection may be explained by studies that used fMRI to measure brain activity.  When participants viewed nature scenes, the parts of the brain associated with empathy and love lit up, but when they viewed urban scenes, the parts of the brain associated with fear and anxiety were activated. It appears as though nature inspires feelings that connect us to each other and our environment.
Too much time in front of screens is deadly

“Nature deprivation,” a lack of time in the natural world, largely due to hours spent in front of TV or computer screens, has been associated, unsurprisingly, with depression. More unexpected are studies by Weinstein and others that associate screen time with loss of empathy and lack of altruism.
 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22857379.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23467965.

http://libra.msra.cn/Publication/6994981/the-cognitive-benefits-of-interacting-with-nature.

http://www.childrenandnature.org/.

http://www.childrenandnature.org/downloads/CNNHealthBenefits2012.pdf

http://californiareleaf.org/trees-in-the-news/the-relationship-between-trees-human-health. 

http://www.tpl.org/publications/books-reports/park-benefits/the-health-benefits-of-parks.html. 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350610003203. 

Largest Flower Is It One Weighing 24 Pounds Or One With Height Of 10 Feet!

These two flowers battle for the nickname "corpse flower" in addition to the largest flower superlative.

Amorphophallus titanum

Bestowing a title for "largest flower" is not always as simple as measuring blooms.

Indeed, Amorphophallus titanum which has an inflorescence that can grow 10 feet in height, is not small by any definition.

The legendary Sir David Attenborough first used the name titan arum to refer to this magnificent tropical plant in the BBC series The Private Lives of Plants because he felt viewers might be offended by the plant’s Latin name, Amorphophallus titanum. Titan arum might have suited Attenborough’s viewers, but the plant still seduces people with one of the world’s largest and rarest flowering structures and and a reproduction method that beguiles insects with the illusion of decay in appearance, odor and even temperature; hence the name “Corpse Flower”.

The “Corpse Flower” is not actually a single flower but an inflorescence (a stalk of many flowers). The flowers are a mixture of tiny male and female flowers held out of sight at the base of the central phallus-like structure (spadix) surrounded by a pleated skirt-like covering (spathe) that is bright green on the outside and deep maroon inside when opened. The female flowers mature before the male (pollen producing) flowers which avoids self-pollination.

Ever since this plant was first discovered in Sumatra, Indonesia in 1878 by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari, it has excited world-wide attention due to its massive size, fascinating appearance and habit of producing a foul odor resembling rotten flesh (to attract insects that pollinate it). During this process, the ‘flower-spadix’ actually heats up to human body temperature. UC Berkeley physicists experimented with an atomic magnetometer to measure possible biomagnetism of Trudy’s flower stalk on 2009. Further information on this topic can be found HERE.

The plant typically requires at least 7 years before it blooms but it may take even longer. In the normal life cycle, the plant produces one single enormous branched leaf at a time that looks like a small tree reaching 10-15 feet. The leaf will go completely dormant after about 16 months while its underground tuber ‘rests’ for awhile. When it next sprouts, it will produce either another single leaf or an enormous bloom.

The flower bud may take months to form but only remains open for a day or two before collapsing to restart the cycle. The characteristic ‘corpse’ odor is only produced for about a day before the collapse. If pollinated, the stalk grows into a large club-like head of orange-red seeds.

Rafflesia 

The flower with the world's largest bloom is the Rafflesia arnoldii. This rare flower is found in the rainforests of Indonesia. It can grow to be 3 feet across and weigh up to 24 pounds! It is a parasitic plant, with no visible leaves, roots, or stem.A plant with no leaves, no roots, no stem and the biggest flower in the world sounds like the stuff of comic books or science fiction.

'It is perhaps the largest and most magnificent flower in the world' was how Sir Stamford Raffles described his discovery in 1818 of Rafflesia arnoldii, modestly named after himself and his companion, surgeon-naturalist Dr James Arnold.

This jungle parasite of south-east Asia holds the all-time record-breaking bloom of 106.7 centimetres (3 ft 6 in) diameter and 11 kilograms (24 lb) weight, with petal-like lobes an inch thick.

It is one of the rarest plants in the world and on the verge of extinction.

As if size and rarity weren't enough, Rafflesia is also one of the world's most distasteful plants, designed to imitate rotting meat or dung.

The flower is basically a pot, flanked by five lurid red-brick and spotted cream 'petals,' advertising a warm welcome to carrion flies hungry for detritus. Yet the plant is now hanging on to a precarious existence in a few pockets of Sumatra, Borneo, Thailand and the Philippines, struggling to survive against marauding humans and its own infernal biology.

Everything seems stacked against Rafflesia. First, its seeds are difficult to germinate. Then it has gambled its life entirely on parasitising just one sort of vine. This is a dangerously cavalier approach to life, because without the vine it's dead.

Having gorged itself on the immoral earnings of parasitism for a few years, the plant eventually breaks out as a flower bud, swells up over several months, and then bursts into flower. But most of the flower buds die before opening, and even in bloom Rafflesia is fighting the clock. Because the flower only lasts a few days, it has to mate quickly with a nearby flower of the opposite sex. The trouble is, the male and female flowers are now so rare that it's a miracle to find a couple ready to cross-pollinate each other.

The World’s Oldest Living Tree Or Organism Is (80,000-1,000,000) Years Old

World's Oldest Is Spread over 105 Acres, And Weighing 6,615 tons!

Let's go through list of 7 oldest tree around the world.

7) Chestnut Tree of One Hundred Horses

 

This tree, located on Mount Etna in Sicily, is the largest and oldest known chestnut tree in the world. Believed to be between 2,000 and 4,000 years old, this tree's age is particularly impressive because Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. The tree sits only 5 miles from Etna's crater. The tree's name originated from a legend in which a company of 100 knights were caught in a severe thunderstorm. According to the legend, all of them were able to take shelter under the massive tree. It is listed by Guinness World Records as having the "greatest tree girth ever," at 190 feet in circumference. 

 

 6)Alerce

The Alerce is a common name for Fitzroya cupressoides, a towering tree species native to the Andes mountains. There's almost no telling how old these trees can get, since most of the larger specimens were heavily logged in the 19th and 20th centuries.To date, the oldest known living specimen is 3,640 years old.

 

5)Sarv-e Abarqu

 

Sarv-e Abarqu, also called the "Zoroastrian Sarv," is a cypress tree in Yazd province, Iran. The tree is estimated to be at least 4,000 years old and, having lived through the dawn of human civilization not far away, it is considered an Iranian national monument. Many have noted that Sarv-e Abarqu is most likely the oldest living thing in Asia. 

 

4) Llangernyw Yew

 

This incredible yew resides in a small churchyard of St. Dygain's Church in Llangernyw village, north Wales. About 4,000 years old, the Llangernyw Yew was planted sometime in the prehistoric Bronze Age — and it's still growing! In 2002, in celebration of the golden jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, the tree was designated as one of 50 Great British trees by the Tree Council. 

 

3)Methuselah

 

At 4,841 years old, this ancient bristlecone pine is the oldest known non-clonal organism on Earth. Located in the White Mountains of California, in Inyo National Forest, Methuselah's exact location is kept a close secret in order to protect it from the public. (An older specimen named Prometheus, which was about 4,900 years old, was cut down by a researcher in 1964 with the U.S. Forest Service's permission.) Today you can visit the grove where Methuselah hides, but you'll have to guess at which tree it is. Could this one be it? 

 

2)Old Tjikko 

 The world’s oldest tree, a 9,500-year-old Norwegian Spruce named “Old Tjikko,”

Wait but its the number 2 how it could be oldest?? For answer check the number one.

“Old Tjikko,” is named after Professor Leif Kullman’s Siberian husky, continues to grow in Sweden. Discovered in 2004 by Kullman, professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University, the age of the tree was determined using carbon-14 dating.

“During the ice age sea level was 120 meters lower than today and much of what is now the North Sea in the waters between England and Norway was at that time forest,” Professor Kullman told Aftonbladet. Winds and low temperatures made Old Tjikko “like a bonsai tree…Big trees cannot get as old as this.”

In the Swedish mountains, from Lapland in the North to Dalarna in the South, scientists have found a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old.Although summers have been colder over the past 10,000 years, these trees have survived harsh weather conditions due to their ability to push out another trunk as the other one died.

Therefore, we can now see that these spruces have begun to straighten themselves out. There is also evidence that spruces are the species that can best give us insight about climate change.

The ability of spruces to survive harsh conditions also presents other questions for researchers.

 

1)The Trembling Giant, or Pando 

 

Imagine: a single root system supplying thousands of tree “stems” over 105 acres, and weighing 6,615 tons (also making it the world’s heaviest living organism). While stems “only” live to be about 200 years old, the root system may be 1 MILLION YEARS OLD, by some scientists reckoning. Oh, and all the tree stems are genetically identical clones.

While many trees spread through flowering and sexual reproduction, quaking aspens usually reproduce asexually, by sprouting new trees from the expansive lateral root of the parent. The individual trees aren’t individuals, but stems of a massive single clone, and this clone is truly massive. 

 

ISN’T NATURE FUN?

 

The Trembling Giant, or Pando, is a enormous grove of quaking aspens that takes the “forest as a single organism” metaphor and literalizes it: the grove really is a single organism. Each of the approximately 47,000 or so trees in the grove is genetically identical and all the trees share a single root system.Pando was once thought to be the world’s largest organism (now usurped by thousand-acre fungal mats in Oregon), and is almost certainly the most massive. In terms of other superlatives, the more optimistic estimates of Pando’s age have it as over one million years old, which would easily make it one of the world’s oldest living organisms.

Unfortunately, the future of the giant appears grim. According to Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University in a October 2010 article in the Deseret News, the Trembling Giant is in danger. While the mature stems of Pando routinely die from the eternal problems of pests and drought, the regenerative roots of the organism that are responsible for Pando’s resilience are under attack as well. Rogers reported a marked absence of juvenile and young stems to replace the older trunks, blaming overgrazing by deer and elk. Without new growth, to replace the old, the Trembling Giant is vulnerable to a catastrophic, sudden withering and shrinking. Rogers confessed, “It’s slipping away very quickly.”

The quaking aspen is named for its leaves, which stir easily in even a gentle breeze and produce a fluttering sound with only the slightest provocation. The effect of this in Pando, multiplied over the tens of thousands of trees and hundred acres, can be unnerving, giving a real sense of life to the ancient, dying, trembling giant.

The only Carbon Negative Country In The World!

The Happiest Country Is Also The Greenest & The Only Carbon Negative country.

 

 

The tiny Buddhist kingdom tucked in the middle of the Himalayas has long been famous for its refusal to judge success on its Gross Domestic Product, instead using an index that measures the Gross National Happiness of its people. A huge part of this is an almost religious like respect for the environment - just take a look at some of its green credentials

The country is none other than BHUTAN.

 Bhutan is the only country in the world that is officially a ‘carbon sink’. That means that it takes in more carbon dioxide than it produces.“According to recent figures, the country emits around 1.5 million tonnes of carbon annually, while its forests absorb over 6 million tonnes,” says Proudly Carbon Neutral. Despite this, it still wants to go even further to zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, while also going 100 percent organic by 2020 and zero-waste by 2030.

The carbon sink status is largely down to Bhutan’s extensive forests. The country is currently 72 percent forested, while the constitution guarantees that figure will always be at least sixty percent. A tree-mendous effort (sorry).

At the start of the year Nissan partnered with the Bhutanese government to provide hundreds of electric cars to the country. The partnership was the start of a campaign launched by Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay to eventually convert all of Bhutan’s vehicles to electric power. The hundreds of initial cars will soon be scaled up to thousands, as Nissan looks at ways to bring electric cars and charging stations to Bhutan’s remote communities.

Bhutan is also the only country in the world where renewable energy is the major export. The hilly terrain and swift flowing rivers mean that it is perfectly suited to producing hydroelectric power. The country produces far more green energy than it needs and sells the excess off to larger countries including India and Bangladesh, meaning that the backbone of the economy is based on creating renewable energy.

Lets go through some Images from Bhutan.

In 2011, the government launched the National Organic Program in order to help the country meet its goal of 100 percent organic by 2020.By teaching farmers good organic farming practices and how to earn more money by growing organic produce, and by providing financial support, Bhutan hopes to reduce waste, decrease the country’s dependence on imported food, and ensure it remains climate-neutral, producing no more climate-changing emissions each year than its forests absorb.

Wish We Could Have Many More Countries Like This!

The Only Person To Win Nobel Prize For Planting Trees Is A Women!

She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement. Planted over 51 million trees.

The great women is Wangari Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011). She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastic (Benedictine College) and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya.

In 2004, Wangari Maathai received the Nobel Peace Prize – becoming the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize – for her work with the Green Belt Movement.Maathai was a leader in Ecofeminist movement. She grew up in rural community, called Ihithe, in Kenya and earned both a bachelors and masters degree from universities in the United States. Maathai was the first Eastern African woman to receive a PhD from the University College of Nairobi.

This non-governmental organization (NGO) uses the direct action of planting trees and facilitating community education to change the current system of oppression that prevents women in rural Kenya from accessing education, resources and land. This form of activism, as direct community empowerment, has been replicated around the world.

The Green Belt Movement functions to support and provide resources to communities for the purpose of demanding democratic space and accountability from national leaders.

 Communities in Kenya (both men and women) have been motivated and organised to both prevent further environmental destruction and restore that which has been damaged.

Wangari Maathai died of complications arising from ovarian cancer while receiving treatment at a Nairobi hospital on 25 September 2011

Google Doodle celebrated the life of the late Kenyan environmental and poliitcal activist, Wangari Maathai, on April 1.

 On 25 September 2013, the Wangari Maathai Trees and Garden was dedicated on the lawn of the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning.[75] The memorial includes two red maples symbolizing Maathai’s "commitment to the environment, her founding of the Green Belt Movement, and her roots in Kenya and in Pittsburgh" and a flower garden planted in a circular shape that representing her "global vision and dedication to the women and children of the world" with an ornamental maple tree in the middle signifying "how one small seed can change the world"