Original subtitles

CHARLIE: Hey, guys! Charlie here, you know my sister, Kirby.

KIRBY: Hey guys!

CHARLIE: Today, we're hanging out 250 feet up in the air at the top of a giant sequoia.

KIRBY: Did you know some of these trees are over 2,000 years old?

CHARLIE (off-screen): Which means this one might have started growing when

Cleopatra was ruling Egypt!

CHARLIE: It's time for Weird But True!

(theme music plays)

MAN (over tv): The African viper cautiously approaches his next meal.

CHARLIE: Hey Kirb, when's your show over?

KIRBY: Sh!

MAN (over tv): He strikes! His toxic venom, seeping into the prey.

CHARLIE: Kirb! KIRBY: Charles! Shh!

MAN (over tv): And so ends the journey of the Gaboon viper.

Found slithering through the rainforests of West Africa.

KIRBY: This show is amazing!

CHARLIE: Ugh! Guys, we got a big problem.

Kirby's super obsessed with this big budget nature documentary

called "Planet World."

MAN (over tv): Jungles. Lions.

Africa. Slow-motion.

Planet World.

CHARLIE: It's cool but a little too cool.

Watch this.

CHARLIE: Kirb! Can you please come outside?

KIRBY: Charles, why would I want to go in a boring backyard when I can watch

a jaguar take out a crocodile in the Amazon?

CHARLIE: This has been my entire week.

So I've concocted a plan to show Kirby that there's nothing ordinary

about our backyard.

Even the simplest things can be fascinating if you take the time to look.

CHARLIE (off-screen): She needs to meet the superheroes living right on top of us!

CHARLIE: So, today, we're unravelling the world of.

BOTH: Trees!

MAN (over tv): Tune in tomorrow for all new episodes of "Planet World."

CHARLIE: Kirb! KIRBY: Charles? CHARLIE: Enough!

KIRBY: What? CHARLIE: You have to go outside eventually.

KIRBY: If I go outside will you let me watch my show in peace?

CHARLIE: Yes.

KIRBY: You have, like, literally 5 minutes of my time.

CHARLIE: Ah, here we are, Kirb.

Alright so, you've watched countless hours of nature documentaries,

see what you got.

What do you see?

KIRBY: Tiny little tree.

That tree's kind of like medium.

And this one's kind of huge, so.

CHARLIE: This is gonna take a lot of work.

CHARLIE: Okay, Kirb, so not all trees are the same.

KIRBY: What's the big deal?

You've got a trunk covered in bark with some leaves.

CHARLIE: So remember when we researched dogs?

And we discovered that there are a bunch of different kinds of dog breeds.

KIRBY: There are over 300 breeds of dog.

Baguette?

CHARLIE: Trees are the same way.

KIRBY: Bonjour. CHARLIE: Bonjour.

There are over 60,000 species of tree.

Croissant?

CHARLIE: 60,000 trees, all with different kinds of leaves.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Leaves from the sweet gum tree look like stars.

Redbud leaves look like hearts.

And leaves from the silver leaved poplar trees are multicolored and have special

flat stems that catch the wind so the leaf dances in the air making the tree sparkle and

shimmer in this glistening spectacle of natural wonder!

KIRBY: You really like trees.

CHARLIE: Yeah.

KIRBY: Well then what kind of leaf is this?

CHARLIE: Well, there are certain books that can tell us.

They're called "Tree Keys."

CHARLIE (off-screen): This is a special one.

Written like a choose-your-own adventure book where you decide which

way your character goes.

CHARLIE: Let's check it out.

CHARLIE (off-screen): You're traveling through a mythical land,

with streams, and castles, and all that good stuff, as you explore the forest for

answers, you come to a fork in the road guarded by a majestic wood nymph.

CHARLIE: Halt! Passenger!

Two paths I see.

Two roads for thee.

One question I seek.

To walk past me.

CHARLIE (off-screen): The wood nymph asks.

CHARLIE: Is your leaf simple or compound?

A simple leaf is made up of just one leaflet.

The compound leaf is made up of a bunch of different leaflets.

KIRBY: Simple.

CHARLIE: The simple path's for thee.

CHARLIE (off-screen): As you continue your search, you come to another fork in the road.

CHARLIE: Halt!

Two paths I see.

KIRBY: Sh! I get it.

What do you want?

CHARLIE: Is your leaf pinnate or palmate?

That depends on where the veins come from.

If they come from one main point, that's palmate or a bunch of

different points, that's pinnate.

KIRBY: Pinnate.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Your quest continues!

KIRBY: Question me, nymph.

CHARLIE: Is your leaf lobed or un-lobed?

CHARLIE: That has to do with the outline of the leaf.

See this? This is a lobed leaf, these are lobes.

But this leaf is un-lobed. It's one simple shape.

KIRBY: Lobed.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Your bravery and patience will now be rewarded

by the graceful nymph!

CHARLIE: Wanderer, you have traveled far.

You have answered my questions.

And now I can identify your leaf.

You have an oak leaf.

KIRBY: Cool. An oak leaf. What was all this for?

Couldn't you have just told me that?

KIRBY: Okay, fine.

So all trees aren't the same.

They've got different leaves on a trunk.

Super cool.

CHARLIE: The closer you look, the more you realize that one tree is radically

different from another tree.

What if I told you, that I could identify a tree just based off a twig?

KIRBY: No way. CHARLIE: I can. KIRBY: Prove it.

CHARLIE: Get two twigs. KIRBY: Fine.

KIRBY: Here you go. Whoa. Nice outfit.

CHARLIE: Wonderful.

We have two twigs in front of us.

Brown, brittle, twiggy.

The answers to their origins lie directly in front of our eyes.

CHARLIE: The first clue? The leaf scar.

CHARLIE (off-screen): When leaves fall off a twig they leave a clue behind.

Like a footprint in the mud.

CHARLIE: Leaves of a certain species of tree are always attached in one of two

different ways: either they're opposite, directly across from each other.

Or alternate, where they're switching off.

CHARLIE: Kirb?

KIRBY: This one has opposite and this one has alternate.

CHARLIE: Of course, opposite and alternate.

We have our footprint, now we need, our fingerprint.

For that, we examine the bud.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Apical buds mark the end of a twig, they show where

the twig is growing from.

And every tree has a unique bud shape.

KIRBY: So this one has buds that are pointy and this one has buds that are round.

So what's this?

CHARLIE (off-screen): Alternate leaves with short round buds in our yard comes

from, the white oak by the creek in the backyard!

KIRBY: And this one?

CHARLIE (off-screen): Opposite leaves and pointy buds come from.

The sugar maple with the tree house in the front yard!

KIRBY: Nice, Charles. You got 'em.

CHARLIE: There you go. Case cracked.

KIRBY: So, when'd you become such an expert on trees?

CHARLIE: I've always been pretty interested in trees, you know,

ever since I was little and from the first time.

KIRBY: Oooh! "Planet World" came out with a new episode on trees.

So thanks, but I'm good.

CHARLIE: Alright, guys, if I wanna get Kirby outside, I gotta come

up with a really intense tree adventure.

Like huge. The biggest.

Adventure. Ever.

Giant sequoias in California.

They're the biggest trees in the entire world.

You can't get more extreme than that.

CHARLIE (off-screen): It's more than 2,000 miles from Chicago to Sequoia National

Park in California.

But it's my best shot to get Kirby off the couch and out into the real world.

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but true, there's a tree in Panama that has a square trunk.

CHARLIE: Hey, guys. We made it!

I dragged Kirby here to the Whitaker Forest in California.

KIRBY: So we can climb some of the most massive trees in the whole world.

CHARLIE: Giant sequoias.

And this is the guy who's gonna help us out.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Dave Katz has made a name for himself as the guru in

giant sequoia climbing.

While he's setting up the safety ropes, I'm going to prove to Kirby that just

watching some TV documentary about trees doesn't make her an expert.

KIRBY (off-screen): Sounds like a challenge, and I accept.

Let's see who knows the most about sequoias!

CHARLIE: Alright, set the scene here, Kirb, what are we looking at?

KIRBY (off-screen): First, giant sequoias don't naturally grow all over the place.

They're mostly here, in California on the western slope of the

Sierra Nevada Mountains.

KIRBY: Giant sequoias are so cool because they're absolutely huge.

CHARLIE (off-screen): No kidding.

They're the largest trees in the world measured by volume.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Take General Sherman, a giant sequoia that grows not far

from here, it's officially the largest tree in the world.

CHARLIE: So let's try to wrap our heads around how big the General is.

For comparison, we're gonna be using our own Weird But True unit of measurement.

1 standard Kirby.

CHARLIE (off-screen): General Sherman is as tall as 52 Kirbys standing

on top of each other.

CHARLIE (off-screen): 19 Kirbys can wrap around its trunk.

But its volume is what's really impressive.

Inside General Sherman, you could fit around 75 million marshmallows.

Or 7 million baseballs.

Or 200,000 basketballs.

Or the volume of 9500 average-sized bathtubs.

Or 150 concrete mixer trucks.

Or, based on our Weird But True standard of unit measurement,

30,000 Kirbys.

KIRBY (off-screen): Whoa, super impressive, but check this out:

Did you know these huge sequoia trees have shallow roots?

They can survive in 3 feet of soil.

Only 3 feet!

The secret is that their roots spread out and intertwine with each other.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Nice one, Kirb, well how about this?

CHARLIE: Giant sequoias can heal themselves if they're injured.

Even if a fire comes and burns the whole thing hollow, they can still survive

for hundreds of years.

KIRBY (off-screen): Really?

I've never heard that, but I think I can top it.

KIRBY: Giant sequoias are so huge they create their own ecosystems.

And they're home to a bunch of different kinds of animals.

KIRBY (off-screen): Acorn ants, cuckoo wasps, white headed woodpeckers,

all kinds of spiders, and even scorpions.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Don't forget big brown bats, tree frogs,

and even snails live in these things, but that's not the coolest part.

CHARLIE: Scientists have found that all of these giant sequoias are connected

underground by fungi.

CHARLIE (off-screen): These fungi are stretched out in thin threads that connect all

trees together almost like a network.

The fungi give the tree nutrients and water, and the trees give the fungi sugar.

The crazy thing?

Trees can share things with each other through these connections.

If a tree is very sick, other trees might send it some nutrients.

CHARLIE: Even crazier, mother trees favor their saplings.

So, just imagine.

Right now, underground, nutrients and information are being passed around

between all these trees.

KIRBY (off-screen): Alright guys, maybe, just maybe, Charlie knows

more about trees than I do.

KIRBY: Dave's gotta be done by now.

CHARLIE: Yeah, we got to get up in these trees, man.

CHARLIE (off-screen): My plan to get Kirby to fall in love with trees is working!

The final step is getting her in a giant sequoia to experience their true glory!

DAVE: Alright. Elevator lines set.

So now all we got to do is just go up there.

KIRBY: Let's do it!

CHARLIE: Okay, so as we climb this tree, we're not only going higher and higher,

but we're also making our way through different layers of the forest.

Right now, we're on the first layer, which is the ground.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Also known as the forest floor.

It's followed by the second layer, the herbaceous layer.

That's where you find flowers and grasses.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Then the third layer is the shrub layer,

where you find bushes and taller plants.

CHARLIE: So, all that's happening at this layer right here.

But the exciting stuff is happening up there.

CHARLIE (off-screen): But getting 300 feet in the air isn't easy.

CHARLIE: To get up the tree, it's kind of like back and forth moving your hands up.

So, each of these little red things are connected to her.

And one is connected to this strap right here that she's stepping into.

CHARLIE: And throw one of them up, and then she can sit back down in her harness and that

one'll kind of catch her so she can move the other one up.

So she's inching up bit by bit.

Feeling good?

KIRBY: Feeling good. CHARLIE: Alright. I'm going to join ya.

KIRBY: Up we go!

CHARLIE: Kirby's taking to climbing trees quite well.

I think she's twice as high as I am right now.

KIRBY: Check it out! CHARLIE: All the way up there.

We are I think like 150 feet up right now, and this is the view we're rocking.

CHARLIE: Not too bad, we're so high, but we got a lot of ways to go.

KIRBY: (Laughs). CHARLIE: So let's do it.

CHARLIE: We're right smack dab in the middle of the understory.

And the understory is the level of the tree that's everything under the canopies.

So if you see, these trees are so tall that they block out a lot of the sun

from reaching the forest floor.

So a lot of the trees and plants on the ground here have

to be really shade tolerant.

And a lot of them are trees that could grow much bigger but right

now they're really small.

They're just waiting for one of these giant sequoias to fall down

and let a bunch of sun penetrate all the way down to the floor.

Then it's just a race to see who can fill that gap next and reach the canopy which

is the next spot we're going.

Let's go check it out.

KIRBY: I'm starting to get into the foliage of the tree, which is super different from

down below because look at how giant this trunk is.

Making our way up into the top of the forest.

CHARLIE: You doin' good? KIRBY: Come on up, Charles. It's awesome.

CHARLIE: Wait up, Kirb.

KIRBY: I made it into the canopy.

It's so cool up here.

CHARLIE: I need another rest stop.

Oh, man. I'm tired.

We made our way to the first branch here.

CHARLIE: We're probably about 250 feet off the ground right now.

And we're in the middle of the next layer of the forest which is the canopy.

CHARLIE (off-screen): This is the part of the forest where the leaves and branches are.

CHARLIE: But this is where it gets a little less scary, though.

That's kind of the cool thing because you can't see the ground as much because all the

leaves and branches are in the way so you can't really tell how high you are until you

look out and then just see this huge amazing view.

It's pretty fantastic.

KIRBY: This is unreal.

CHARLIE: You got one more stop at the top.

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but true, there's a type of eucalyptus tree that

has rainbow-colored bark!

CHARLIE: You got one more stop at the top.

KIRBY: Let's go see the view!

CHARLIE: Alright guys, we finally made it to the top layer of the forest,

we're in the emergent layer right now.

CHARLIE: So the emergent layer is the tippy top of the

tallest trees in the entire area.

We're just juttin' up over everything right now.

It looks absolutely insane.

CHARLIE: Most emergent layers maybe 100 feet if they are super tall,

but right now we're 300 feet up in the air.

Wow. There's nothing like this.

KIRBY: Absolutely!

CHARLIE (off-screen): Let me hit you with a few more sequoia facts

I've been saving, Kirb.

CHARLIE: At the very top of the trees are these giant sequoia seed cones.

So inside these seed cones are super, super tiny seeds that grow

into this enormous tree.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Each sequoia cone has about 200 seeds.

And each year a giant sequoia produces on average 2,000 cones.

That means each year they produce 400,000 seeds.

CHARLIE: These seed cones can hang on the tree for upwards of 20 years,

before these seeds can germinate and grow into a tree the size of 30,000 Kirby's.

KIRBY (off-screen): 20 Years? That's crazy!

I have to hand it to Charlie, his love of trees really is impressive,

and a little contagious.

Don't forget, we aren't the only ones having a good time up here.

CHARLIE: We got Dave he's our pro up here.

DAVE: Hey.

CHARLIE: Jared's all the way up top, setting our lines and Kirby and I are just trying to

not get too tangled on top of this giant sequoia.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Because if you do get tangled, sometimes you have to

Tarzan your way out.

And navigating these ropes safely is serious business, so it's super important to

always climb up with a team of experts.

KIRBY: That's your goal.

CHARLIE: Oh!

DAVE: That was sick.

CHARLIE: The coolest part about climbing trees is if you're still for a little and

you close your eyes and you can feel the tree kind of swaying back and forth,

it's just a reminder that you're climbing a living thing and it's so cool.

KIRBY: Kinda feels like you're on a ship.

CHARLIE: Yeah, like you're on a boat or something like that.

It's pretty incredible.

KIRBY (off-screen): Not even "Planet World" can compare to the rush of climbing 300 feet

into the air on a single rope, next to a tree that could possibly be 2,000 years old!

CHARLIE: The really cool thing is that everything that we've talked about,

giant sequoias, it applies to almost all trees everywhere.

KIRBY: What do you mean?

CHARLIE: I mean 90% of trees never stop growing, scientists have found 280 different kinds

of insects that grow on oak trees.

And that fungi that we talked about that connects all of these giant sequoias

underground, connects all trees in all forests.

So think about those relationships and the connections happening in our

backyard at home right now.

KIRBY: I guess we should check it out then.

CHARLIE: I guess so, but only if you want to, Kirb.

KIRBY: Of course, Charles, 'cause you know trees they're kind of awesome. Right?

CHARLIE: Ok guys, I guess we've got some exploring to do in our backyard.

CHARLIE: This is exactly what I'm talking about.

A huge giant tree, with enormous spikes just erupting from the bark.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Meet backyard supertree, The Impaler.

Also known as the honey locust.

CHARLIE: Imagine you're a prehistoric herbivore dinosaur looking for a meal.

Roar!

It's time for lunch. What a nice tree.

CHARLIE: You try to climb to the top to eat the leaves but, "Oh, no!"

It's so prickly. You can't climb.

You run away to another tree.

The tree is saved. It's perfect.

KIRBY: And these are the thorns that it evolved to protect itself against

prehistoric dinosaurs?

CHARLIE: Yep. KIRBY: Pretty crazy!

CHARLIE: And we're just getting started.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Meet Backyard Super Tree #2, The Regenerator,

also known as the willow.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Most trees including the giant sequoia

need seeds to regenerate.

These trees don't need anything at all.

CHARLIE: If any of these leaves gets detached and makes their way into the ground,

they're gonna regenerate into a giant willow tree like this.

KIRBY: Those tiny branches can make this giant tree?

CHARLIE: A whole new tree just like this right in our back yard.

Remember earlier, Kirb, when you were looking at all these trees and you

thought they're just different sizes of the same kind of tree?

KIRBY: Feels like ages ago.

CHARLIE: What do you see now? KIRBY: There are way too many.

I don't think I can keep them straight.

CHARLIE: Here you go. Your own tree key.

KIRBY: Sweet! Let's go see what we can find!

KIRBY: White oak.

Silver maple.

Ornamental pear.

And this is a spruce.

So all of these trees have special leaves, on special twigs,

with special buds.

And they interact with animals and each other.

And create this one huge ecosystem in my backyard!

KIRBY: I have a great idea! I'll be right back.

I gotta go grab some stuff, but guys, stick around.

CHARLIE (off-screen): With the ferocity of the jaguar, the honey locust demands respect,

but like the luscious glow of a sunset, it is the subtle elegance that makes the willow

the king of the suburban landscape.

CHARLIE: So ends our journey through the majestic woodland ecosystem of

Charlie and Kirby's backyard.

We'll see you next time, on "Planet World."

KIRBY: Cut!

I need more emotion! More British!

Bob, raise up that boom.

You're almost in my shot.

And Pat, slow down that pan.

Way too fast! Come on, people! We're losing light!

CHARLIE: Alright, guys, it looks like we have a new project on our hands,

but thanks so much for stopping by.

Come by again when we discover more things that are weird....

KIRBY: But true.

CHARLIE: We'll see you later! KIRBY: From the top!

CHARLIE: And so ends our journey through the majestic woodland ecosystem of

Charlie and Kirby's backyard. See you next time.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.