Situated on New Zealand's Campbell Island, near the Antarctic, is a 30-foot-tall Sitka spruce known as the Ranfurly Tree. It's located about 120 miles from the nearest other tree on the Auckland Islands, making it the world's most remote tree. According to local legend, New Zealand's governor Lord Ranfurly planted it there on a visit to the island in 1901. This may not be true, though, as carbon dating has suggested an estimated planting date of post-1910.

In 1909, First Lady Helen Taft teamed up with conservationist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore to bring sakura — Japanese cherry trees — to the nation's capital. Transportation complications and an unfortunate insect infestation delayed the plan, but in 1912, Mrs. Taft and Iwa Chinda, the wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two cherry trees on the northern bank of the Tidal Basin. Those trees, which still stand today, were soon joined by thousands of others donated by the mayor of Tokyo.

Colombia's Quindio wax palms are the tallest in the world. Cocora Valley in Los Nevados National Natural Park is full of the towering plants, which can grow to be up to 200 feet tall. Other species of palm, like the coconut palm, top out at around 100 feet, so these giants are in a league of their own. Unfortunately, because they're specific to certain regions and conditions, they're in danger of dying out. But scientists are working to preserve the species, which was named Colombia's national tree in 1985.

There's a very unusual structure in the village of Allouville-Bellefosse, France. It's a centuries-old tree that's home to two chapels carved inside its trunk, with a spiral staircase winding around the tree to provide access. During the anti-church sentiment of the French Revolution, a mob almost set fire to the tree, but a local saved it by renaming it a "Temple of Reason." Although parts of the tree are now supported by poles and patched up with wooden shingles, worshippers still visit regularly.

Every year since 1947, Oslo, Norway, has presented London with a special gift: an enormous Christmas tree that stands in the center of Trafalgar Square. The tree, which is carefully selected from the forests surrounding Norway’s capital of Oslo, travels more than 1,000 miles to London and serves as a token of gratitude to Britain for its assistance to Norway during World War II. An annual lighting ceremony takes place in Trafalgar Square to kick off the Christmas season.

Isla Hornos is a Chilean island at the very southern tip of South America. Here, you’ll find Cape Horn, where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. It's one of the windiest places in the world — hurricane-force winds of 75 mph are common — so the trees in the area don't grow very tall. That includes the world's southernmost tree, a Magellan's beech tree located at the edge of the island and standing just a foot and a half tall.

An acacia known as the Tree of Ténéré, located in Niger's Sahara Desert, was thought to be the world's most isolated tree for several hundred years. A remnant of a time when the Sahara was greener, it was the only tree for about 250 miles around and was used as a landmark for people traversing the otherwise barren landscape. That is, until a Libyan driver in a truck ran it over in 1973. You can still see its preserved trunk at the Niger National Museum.

In 2013, scientists announced that an unnamed Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, located in Inyo National Forest near Yosemite National Park, had been verified as 5,062 years old. Prior to that, a nearby tree named Methuselah had been the reigning "oldest tree," with an age of 4,848 years. Other trees on Earth are reportedly older than these two in California, but they are colony trees that clone and reproduce — in other words, large groups of trees that are connected by a single root system.

At about 52,500 cubic feet when it was last measured accurately in the 1980s, General Sherman is the world's largest tree by volume. (For reference, that's about half the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool.) But despite being big, General Sherman is not particularly old by sequoia standards — the tree is only about 2,000 years young, whereas other sequoias are thought to be more than 3,000 years old.

Deep in California's Redwood National Park stands a monster of a tree named Hyperion. Of the estimated 3 trillion trees on the planet, Hyperion is widely believed to be the tallest. Standing at an impressive 380 feet, the coastal redwood is more than twice the size of the Statue of Liberty (minus the pedestal). Amazingly, this forest giant wasn't discovered until the mid-2000s, and its exact location is kept under wraps to protect the tree.