The “Tree of Life” refers to several famous places, symbols, and scientific concepts. The most searched-for is a real tree standing alone in the desert of Bahrain, but you’ll also find notable trees of life on the Washington coast, at Walt Disney World, and across religious and scientific traditions. Here’s where each one is and what makes it worth knowing about.
The Tree of Life in Bahrain
The most famous real-world Tree of Life stands in Bahrain’s southern Sakhir Desert, about 35 kilometers from the capital city of Manama. Known locally as Shajarat-al-Hayat, it’s a mesquite tree (from the acacia family, called ghaf locally) that rises nearly 10 meters tall and is over 400 years old. A soil and dendrochronology analysis in the 1990s dated it to roughly 1582.
What makes this tree remarkable is its isolation. It grows in an almost completely barren stretch of desert with no obvious water source nearby. Scientists believe its root system reaches deep underground to tap into water reserves, though the exact mechanism has never been fully mapped. The mystery has made it a pilgrimage site for tourists and a national landmark for Bahrain.
The site is free to visit and open daily from 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM. You can drive there from Manama in about 30 to 40 minutes. There’s a small parking area, but no major facilities, so bring water, especially in the summer months.
The Kalaloch Tree of Life in Washington State
On the coast of Olympic National Park in Washington, a Sitka spruce clings to the edge of a sandy bluff near Kalaloch Beach. Decades of erosion carved a cave beneath its roots, leaving the tree suspended over open air in a dramatic, almost impossible pose. It became one of the most photographed trees in the Pacific Northwest.
As of early 2025, the Kalaloch Tree of Life is in serious trouble. Recent winter storms battered the tree and enlarged the cave beneath it, and it dropped roughly five feet in a matter of weeks. The erosion has been building for a long time. A culvert built above the tree in the 1960s created a path for water to flow toward it, slowly digging the canyon the tree now straddles. National Park Service efforts to stabilize the coastal bluffs actually worsened erosion around the tree over the years. Storm surge from below and runoff from above have been scouring the cave from both directions.
The National Park Service has said it won’t intervene. “We’ll let what passes for nature take its course,” a park spokesperson told Seattle Met. Driftwood logs washed into the cave by tides are currently supporting the base of the tree, but the consensus is that it will eventually fall. If visiting the Kalaloch Tree of Life is on your list, sooner is better than later. It’s located along Kalaloch Beach, accessible from Highway 101 on the Olympic Peninsula.
The Tree of Life at Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando, Florida, is built around a massive artificial Tree of Life that serves as the park’s centerpiece. It stands 145 feet tall with over 300 animal shapes carved into its trunk and branches. The carvings include everything from lions and dolphins to hummingbirds and scorpions, and spotting them up close is part of the experience.
At the base of the tree, nestled among its sculpted roots, there’s a landscaped area with pools and meadows that house live animals including lemurs, flamingos, kangaroos, and tortoises. Inside the trunk itself is a theater showing “It’s Tough to Be a Bug!”, a 3D film. The tree is visible from most areas of the park, but walking up to its base gives you the best view of the intricate carvings.
Trees of Life in Religion and Mythology
The phrase “Tree of Life” appears across many of the world’s oldest traditions. In the Bible, Genesis 2:9 places it in the center of the Garden of Eden alongside the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The text describes God making “all kinds of trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food,” with the Tree of Life at the garden’s heart. The Garden of Eden’s location has never been identified with certainty, though traditions have placed it in Mesopotamia, near the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq.
In Norse mythology, the Tree of Life is Yggdrasil, an enormous ash tree that connects different worlds together. It links the realm of the gods, the world of humans, and the underworld, with its roots and branches extending across all of existence. Celtic tradition has its own version: a sacred tree at the center of the Celtic Otherworld, representing the connection between earth and the spiritual realm. These mythological trees aren’t tied to a single physical location. They represent a universal human impulse to see trees as symbols of life, connection, and endurance.
The Scientific Tree of Life
In biology, the Tree of Life is a diagram that maps the evolutionary relationships among all living things. For three decades, the standard model organized life into three separate domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya (the group that includes animals, plants, fungi, and all other organisms with complex cells). Recent genetic evidence has shaken that framework. Research published in Current Biology shows that eukaryotes, the domain we belong to, actually arose from within Archaea rather than as an independent branch. Newly discovered archaeal species with eukaryote-like features support this, suggesting the tree may really have two primary trunks rather than three.
The scientific Tree of Life also exists as a literal digital tool. The Darwin Tree of Life project, run through the Wellcome Sanger Institute, is working to sequence the genomes of all known species of animals, plants, fungi, and single-celled organisms in Britain and Ireland, with a goal of delivering high-quality genomes for 70,000 species. The Open Tree of Life project takes a broader approach, synthesizing published evolutionary studies into a single, searchable database that anyone can explore online.
The Baobab: Africa’s Tree of Life
In sub-Saharan Africa, the baobab tree has long been called the “Tree of Life” because nearly every part of it is useful. Its fruit is rich in vitamin C, its bark can be woven into rope and cloth, and its massive trunk can store thousands of liters of water. Baobabs are some of the longest-lived trees on the planet.
The Sagole Baobab in South Africa’s Limpopo province is one of the most impressive examples. Located in the Mutale municipality in the country’s northernmost region, it stands 20.5 meters tall with a trunk circumference of nearly 34 meters and a crown spread of 40 meters. Carbon dating places its age at around 1,200 years old, making it one of the oldest known baobabs still standing.