That is Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific Ocean. This island is famous for its special vegetation. Not only is there up to 1,000 rare and endangered plant species here, but also because of the enormous size of many plants. Most of them have giant versions of herbaceous plants. In other places on Earth, they are only as tall as an adult's knee, but on Sakhalin Island they are up to 5 meters tall.
Sakhalin Island has about 500,000 people living and concentrated only in the city of Yuzho-Sakhalinsk, the rest of the island's area is a wildlife and plant reserve as well as an eco-tourism development area.
Plants on Sakhalin Island are five times larger than usual. (Photo: Russia Beyond)
According to reports by scientists from the Institute of Geology and the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2009, they discovered many unusually large plant species on the island of Sakhalin. Buckwheat plants on the island grow up to 3 meters high (normally they grow from 0.4 to 1.7 meters); burdock plants grow up to 5 meters high (their average height is from 1 to 1.5 meters).
Even when going out, the locals do not bring umbrellas because if it suddenly rains, they just need to pick a burdock leaf to avoid getting wet. The average diameter of the burdock leaves on Sakhalin Island is 3 meters. Therefore, people often use them as umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun and rain.
During the study, the experts found that the herbaceous plants were only unusually large in 12 areas in the southern part of the island. This means that only these areas are home to the giant plants. They believe that their strange growth is due to tectonic activity in the Earth's crust in those areas, which generates large amounts of heat and petroleum hydrocarbons to feed the plant roots. Higher concentrations of copper and chromium compounds have also been identified as a potential factor in this extraordinary growth.
The giant trees on the island attract many visitors. (Photo: Russia Beyond)
However, despite the unusually tall trees on Sakhalin Island, people still use them for food. They have even become famous local specialties used to entertain tourists visiting this place.
Apparently, the impressive size of the trees on the island has attracted a large number of adventurers. No visitor to Sakhalin Island fails to pose next to the giant trees of this place.
Quoc Thai (Source: Russia Beyond)
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