Dream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing factsDream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing facts This is the most amazing reproduction behavior story I’ve ever heard. It involves a very carrying mothering. It involves… fire. It involves… a tree. And the tree is not the place for some hot loving… actually, I am wrong: the tree is the place for the hot loving. AND the tree is the one who does the loving. Yep. The hot one.

Dream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing factsDream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing facts Douglas Firs grow to be some of the oldest trees in the world. Do you know anybody else (plant or, ha-ha, fauna), who can beat the 1000 year old record? These trees find it a piece of cake.

The sycamores and redwoods in California can accomplish some of these feats. They grow really-really wide. The Douglas Fir does no such thing. It is a modern fashion diva: slim, tall and sexy, with its gorgeous mane of gentle looking needles more than 300 feet up high in the sky. While she is young, they bring joy and beauty to the littlest Canadians: young Douglas Firs make the most attractive Christmas Trees. And the mature, fully grown beauties would be a bit hard to decorate with Christmas lights: the tallest one today holds a record of 316 feet high! It hurts the neck to tip the head back far enough to see this treetops disappear in the clouds.

This gorgeous tree-diva is not just tall. She is a true sun worshiper. She hates the shade, she has to be fully bathing in the sun beans for the whole world to admire her beauty. And the little babies that she sprouts here and there, follow her lead: they desperately crave every drop of sun there is.

This amazing tree-diva is the most devoted mom I’ve ever seen in in a plant world. She helps her babies to get more sun. How can she do that?

Through extremely careful family planning.

And really hot reproduction practices.

Literary hot. She needs a… fire.

Yes, the terrifying forest fire can be incredibly beneficial for the natural forest lifestyle. Douglas Tree is welcoming it with all its might.

Why would a tree be welcoming fire, you would ask? Can’t it burn?!

Dream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing factsDream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing facts That's the thing! It can’t. Once it passes 30 year mark, it… can’t. It is a FIREPROOF TREE! Have you heard of anything like this?! It’s bark has some unique structure and easily withstands really passionate and fiery moments. Days. Weeks.

She does more than that: Douglas tree heats up inside so much from all the passions raging wild around her, her sap and insides just boil like a tea kettle. And just like a tea kettle, she wants to let off the steam. With a bang.

So Douglas Tree uses the tree-burrowing insects’ tunnels to let off some steam. Again, just like the kettle, steam is escaping with a great sense of rush and strong flow. It is covering everything in the 25m radius with it’s hot, steaming fluides… that are not so fireproof as the bark of the tree. Quite the opposite - it is extremely highly flammable!

So everything in the 25m radius around the Douglas Fir is starting to burn even with a greater passion. So great, actually, that by the end of the whole messy ordeal, the only one who remains - is the sweet tall Douglas tree in the middle of the ash covered meadow. Ash covered - the most fertile soil you could think off…

Time to release the babies! This tree’s cones and seeds are too hard to open up even for squirrels. But after days and days of raging fires below, they dry up quite nicely, fall down all the way from the top, and both from the strong aftermath of such a long fall, and from dryness - open up like seashells to the waves. The new little seedlings take on growing quite comfortably and surprisingly fast, enjoying every bit of sunshine their loving tree-mom just opened up for them.

I’ve got to admit, that I was absolutely smitten by this incredible story. We work so hard on getting creative in the tiny little things that we do… and this tree just outdid us all, ha-ha!

My boys were in awe as much as we were. Thanks to the amazing Catalano Suspension Bridge guides, they were fascinated with nature much more than I could ever dream of. It puts yet another big point to our “traveling with kids” argument… with impressions like these, they just bound to grow more caring and compassionate to the world around them, aren’t they?

Dream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing factsDream Come True Photo Canadian Rainforest Vancouver Island Amazing facts