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The world's great tree crops

The trees that feed and clothe civilisations — palms, tea, and the oil crop whose location decides everything.

Trees
  1. 01
    Coconut palms leaning over a tropical beach with green fruit in the crowns
    Trees№ 0925 min

    Coconut: The Tree of a Thousand Uses

    A palm that disperses itself across oceans, yields for most of a century, and supplies food, water, oil, fibre and timber from one crop.

  2. 02
    Date palms with heavy clusters of ripening dates in a desert oasis
    Trees№ 1195 min

    Date Palm: The Tree That Made the Oasis Possible

    A desert palm that tolerates heat, drought and salt, offsets its own shade for the crops beneath it, and is propagated only from offshoots.

  3. 03
    An oil palm plantation with heavy orange fruit bunches at the base of the fronds
    Trees№ 3275 min

    Oil Palm: The Highest-Yielding Oil Crop and the Deforestation It Drives

    A palm that produces more oil per hectare than any alternative — which is exactly why it has cleared so much rainforest, and why the alternatives are worse.

  4. 04
    Rows of pruned tea bushes forming a continuous plucking table on a hillside
    Trees№ 4865 min

    Tea: One Plant, Every Type, Kept as a Waist-High Bush

    Green, black, oolong and white are the same leaf processed differently — plus why the tea plant is a tree pruned into a plucking table.

  5. 05
    Coffee bushes and young cacao growing beneath a canopy of taller shade trees
    Trees№ 0606 min

    Cacao and Coffee: The Understorey Cash Crops

    Two shade-adapted crops that built agroforestry economies — why sun-grown systems yield more and cost more, and what shade actually buys.

  6. 06
    An ancient olive tree with a hollow gnarled trunk and silver-green canopy
    Trees№ 3286 min

    Olive: The Tree That Refuses to Die

    Millennia-old trees, alternate bearing, and the bacterium killing ancient groves — plus why olives need processing before anyone can eat them.

  7. 07
    Ripe oranges and lemons on evergreen citrus trees in a sunlit grove
    Trees№ 0865 min

    Citrus: Evergreen Fruit and a Very Small Family Tree

    Almost every citrus derives from three wild ancestors — plus rootstock choice, greening disease, and growing them where winters bite.

  8. 08
    Mango, jackfruit and papaya growing together in a layered tropical homegarden
    Trees№ 5016 min

    Tropical Fruit Trees: Mango, Avocado, Jackfruit, Papaya

    The heavy hitters of tropical food forests — flowering triggers, the avocado's odd sex life, and why jackfruit may be the most underrated crop there is.

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