It is indeed possible for trees to split apart in extreme conditions and to do so quite noisily, she said, typically when there’s a big swing in temperatures. In these instances, sap rapidly freezes when the mercury plummets and the tree expands, its trunk or limbs busting open like the buttons on a too-tight shirt after Thanksgiving dinner.

Scientists have discovered a tropical “dynamite tree” that explosively launches seeds at 150 mph. The mechanism uses physics, not biology, revealing nature’s fastest plant dispersal methods ever recorded.