Methuselah a gnarled bristlecone pine from California between the Sierra Madre mountain range and Death Valley desert wasteland
But a tree named Alerce Milenario (Gran Abuelo, "Great Grandfather") was recently discovered in Chile, South America, that may be centuries older, according to tree experts attempting to date it
Coastal redwood Hyperionof California (over 370 feet) is the tallest tree in the world, discovered in 2006, next to other very tall trees.
The largest (not tallest, not widest, but overall biggest, assuming someone has compared it to those massive Tree of Life trees in Africa, the baobab) is General Sherman, who lives in California's Sequoia National Park
Today, August 25, the focus shifts from commercial deals to celebrating and supporting America’s natural wonders. Many parks, like Yellowstone, Yosemit, and Grand Canyon, often offer free admission on this special day [though everyone can get into national parks around the country free for the rest of the year due to a special dispensation that is not widely advertised if one were to look it up], encouraging visitors to experience their beauty firsthand. Organizations like the National Park Foundation and Friends of the National Parks groups host fundraising drives and volunteer events, often partnering with brands like REI and Patagonia for donation matching. Local businesses near park entrances may offer special discounts to park rangers and staff as a token of appreciation. More
This painting holds one of my favorite lines from the prayer beneath the collection: "Help us restore what has been harmed and create a future of harmony and respect."
I painted it as a sunrise, a center of gold opening into rays of red and orange, the first light after a long, dark night.
I wanted to make something in color that remembered that the morning still comes no matter how hard the dark period.
The best way to see a sunrise is through an old growth forest of vibrant trees
.
What we compose shows, so do it with care
The original is now ready to find its home.
Inquire on Cohart. People sometimes ask how long a painting like this takes me to compose. The painting itself is a matter of days, but the more complete answer is that it takes much longer. This is because the gold comes in layers that each needs its own time and cannot be hurried.
Gold teaches me patience. It will lift, crack, or refuse if it is rushed. So I stopped counting in days and started counting in layers.
I want to save our world's forests!
A future is built the same way: not in one grand gesture, but in patient layers, small daily choices and acts, the things we plant (sow) and tend (cultivate) and refuse to give up on. What we care for grows. What we show up for shows. Everyone can see what shows from our care in its composition.
As of today, "A Future of Harmony and Respect" is available to view on Cohart, to acquire by inquiry. If someone is standing at the start of something, this is a sunrise for that wall.
It is a one-of-a-kind, watercolor with 24 karat sustainable gold leaf, with a prayer sealed inside that can be accessed through a chip that allows it to be heard aloud. And it arrives with a certificate of authenticity and earth conscious packaging.
And I would love to hear: What part of the living world do you most want to see restored?
(Maybe it's forests, human communities, vegan kitchens, wild grasslands, fish oceans, bird skies, tunnel systems, space belts full of debris... Tell us in the comment section below)
With love,
Ekaterina Sky
P.S. Feeling moved beyond wall art and mural painting? PLANT TREES through a new movement at ourlifeforce.org. Also, see my art on Instagram: @ekaterina.sky.art
City Plants is a program funded by the LADWP, which is exploring opportunities to expand offerings beyond the City of Los Angeles and into surrounding communities. Send request
Make a Difference with City Plants
City is getting hotter. We can be part of the solution. Donations plant shade trees that combat climate change, cool neighborhoods, and improve health. Help grow a cooler, greener LA.
(The Huntington) Started streaming at onset of anticipation of bloom on July 6, 2026: Join us as we watch and wait for two unpredictable corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) plants to bloom. The Number 1 question: What does it SMELL like? This is very easy to answer and experience without a visit. Scratch your bum. Cup hand. Breathe hot breath on it. Now take a short whiff. WARNING: Do not attempt if living in Boil Heights or experiencing intestinal parasites such as the dirty fruit bug (cyclosporiasis) currently overtaking the U.S. or if under a heat and humidity alert. Learn more: huntington.org/botanical-...
Internationally recognized environmental activistJulia Butterfly Hill travels to Pasadena to headline a public fundraiser supporting community efforts to preserve 193 trees slated for destruction and removal by the PUSD (Pasadena Unified School District).
Her appearance comes as the school district's tree-removal plans have drawn widespread public condemnation, concern, legal action, peaceful protests and demonstrations, and extensive regional media coverage.
Despite weeks of advocacy, the school district has not yet committed to permanently preserving any of the remaining trees slated for destruction and removal.
Trees at San Rafael Elementary School, including mature and protected trees, were removed during bird nesting season without city tree permits or on-site biological monitoring.
Pasadena is honored to welcome Julia Butterfly Hill. She is traveling here to support efforts to preserve the trees of the Pasadena Unified School District.
She is an internationally-recognized environmental advocate best known for her historic 738-day treehouse sit to protect an ancient, giant California redwood, an act of peaceful civil disobedience that inspired people around the world.
Join us for an evening hosted by the youth working to protect the PUSD trees.
Entourage effect: The entourage effect is a hypothesis that cannabis compounds, other than the cannabinoids tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), act synergistically with cannabinoids to modulate the overall psychoactive effects of the plant [1, 2]. The effect has also been applied in the case of magic (psilocybin) mushrooms, with other compounds besides psilocybin having been hypothesized to also contribute to the effects of the mushrooms [3]. More
Hosted by prolific plant author Christopher Nyerges, nature guide, and founder of School of Self-Reliance: The Wild Food and Self-Reliance Discovery Meetup Group
(with 4.9 out of 5.0 stars with 143 reviews) is leading a nature walk:
Wild Food Ethnobotanical Walk
Saturday, May 9, 2026 10:00 am
$65 (seniors and students $45)
To attend and for exact directions, register HERE. Join us for an outing in Los Angeles where we explore the edible, medicinal, and other useful qualities of many of the native plants found in the environment with many introduced (invasive) plants.
Both natives and non-native plants will be seen. This is a leisurely walk in the woods. All will also get a chance to taste some of the plants.
We will introduce a few basics of systematic plant identification and ways to start a record of various species.
We’ll bring up an important point: Many of the wild plants we see — especially the non-natives — can easily be cultivated in our own yards for ease of harvesting.
There are also local native plant nurseries where we can obtain native plants — such as toyon berries, ceonothus, oak trees, mulefat (Baccharis salicifolia), elder, and so on — to grow them at home, where we can provide the ideal situation for them.
Wear comfortable footwear and bring water and a bowl for eating.
This class can serve as credit towards the the School of Self-RelianceEthnobotanyCertificate. Directions sent upon registration.
New research at Michael Pollan's laboratory at UC Berkeley confirms what Cambridge scientist J.C. Bose, Paramahamsa Yogananda, Peter Tompkins, Christopher Bird, Tel Aviv University researchers, dryads, sensitives, empaths like Dr. Doreen Virtue and Dr. Caroline Myss and gardeners everywhere have known and been telling us for a long time.
Mind you, ancient Mexicans are the same people who gave the world chocolate or xocolatl (bitter cocoa water), which they called Theobroma cacao, "The food of the gods." Who were these celestial visitors or "gods," who pointed out the potent nutritional seeds and delicious flavor of the cacao fruit?
The first chocolate drink is believed to have been created at least 5,300 years ago, starting with the Mayo-Chinchipe culture in what is present-day Ecuador [3] and later consumed by the Maya around 2,500–3,000 years ago. A cocoa drink was an essential part of Mexico's Aztec culture by 1400 AD [4]. The drink was introduced by Mexico (New World) and became popular in Europe has undergone changes since. Until the 19th century, hot chocolate was used medicinally to treat ailments such as liver and stomach diseases. More
Amaranth (family Amaranthaceae) delivers complete protein, survives drought, and for centuries fed 20+ million people. Then in 1519, Spanish Conquistadors made growing it punishable by death in Mexico (Mesoamerica) and the Americas.
Amaranth contains 13-14% complete protein with all 9 essential amino acids, one of the very few vegan plant sources of a complete protein, along with quinoa.
Amaranth produces more usable protein per acre than cattle grazing and thrives in conditions where wheat dies.
The Aztecs mixed it with honey to create tzoalli—sacred dough shaped into gods, worshipped, and eaten for supreme nourishment.
To the European Spanish invaders, this was demonic and cannibalistic. To modern agriculture, it's a threat.
Donkeys (burros) and hairless dogs in the New World, natural helpers of humans
Heirloom seeds: DNA treasure
By 1970, amaranth had nearly gone extinct. Today it is sold as a $30-a-pound (lb) superfood in health food stores while wheat and corn—both harmful and incomplete proteins—dominate 90% of global grain production.
The amaranth ban ended, but the seed companies never brought it back. This is the story of how religion, colonial conquest, and industrial agriculture buried the most nutritious grain in the Americas.
🔍 IN THIS DOCUMENTARY:
Why amaranth was banned under penalty of death (2:15)
The complete protein the Aztecs discovered (4:30)
How Spain weaponized food to destroy a civilization (6:45)
Why modern agriculture still refuses to grow it (10:30)
Where amaranth survived for 500 years in hiding (12:00)
📚 SOURCES AND RESEARCH:
Florentine Codex (Bernardino de Sahagún, 1600)
Aztec tribute records and archaeological cultivation data USDA nutritional database comparisons
Robert Rodale's Organic Gardening research (1975)
International Center for Tropical Agriculture yield studies
🌿 RELATED LOST VAULTS: → The painkiller growing in ditches (wild lettuce) → The Omega-3 weed in our driveway (purslane) → The Native American fruit that vanished (pawpaw)
⚠️ DISCLAIMER: This video is for educational and historical purposes only. Always consult qualified professionals before making dietary changes. Historical events are presented based on documented sources and scholarly research.
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to Forgotten Roots for suppressed knowledge on forgotten plants, erased medicine, and food history they don't teach us in school. #Amaranth #AztecHistory#AncientGrains #ForgottenFoods #Conquistadors #Protein #Superfood #Agriculture #SuppressedKnowledge #Documentary
*Joan Halifax collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof in the 1970s, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work (palliative care) with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying, which she founded. She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.
“Consciousness has kind of become the secular substitute for the soul [Ancient Greek psyche as in psychology and psyche-delic],” Pollan tells interviewer Terry Gross.
Pollan also talks about current studies on consciousness and whether other animals, plants, bacteria, algae, and programmed hardware/software combinations known as "artificial intelligence" have or can eventually have consciousness. More + AUDIO
Buddhist author Michael Pollan has a Number 1 best seller
in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, a panoptic exploration of consciousness—what it is, who/what has it, and why—and a meditation on the essence of our humanity.
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: It feels [not thinks] like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience (sentience) of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries.
What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of water in the sea?
In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy [tofu like] gray matter could generate a subjective point of view—assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality.
Pollan takes readers to the cutting edge of the field, where neuroscientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness.
He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of this slippery stream of consciousness.
In Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than this everyday reality.
Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own brains and minds, hearts and feelings, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and what we assume to be our deepest selves. More: A World Appears
See all formats and editions for savings. Book comes out Feb. 24, 2026. Pre-order price guarantee. Named a "most anticipated book of 2026" by The New York Times, TIME, and Oprah Daily.
Guest Michael Pollan, Terry Gross, Tonya Mosley, Adam Staniszewski, NPR.org, Feb. 19, 2026; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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