American photographer Beth Moon has spent the past 14 years travelling the world in a quest to document the world's biggest, rarest and oldest trees. Most have only survived thanks to their isolation on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves, but just a few maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization.

'Standing as the earth’s largest and oldest living monuments, I believe these symbolic trees will take on a greater significance, especially at a time when our focus is directed at finding better ways to live with the environment, celebrating the wonders of nature that have survived throughout the centuries,' she writes on her website.

'By feeling a larger sense of time, developing a relationship with the natural world, we carry that awareness with us as it becomes a part of who we are.'

(dailymail.co.uk)