“The tree that hits the moon.”

1 / 1(a) Point cloud data of the ‘Temples of Giants’ near Mt. Benya, collected using a handheld laser scanner. (b) Zoomed view of the point cloud showing three individuals within the giant forest; the persons serve as a scale reference to convey tree height and canopy size. Credit: Hsu et al., 2026 In 2023, this persistence paid off: the team located the reigning champion of the island’s forests: an 84.1-meter-tall (275.9 foot) Taiwania fir (Taiwania cryptomerioides). This massive tree currently holds the title of the tallest tree in all of East Asia. To the Indigenous Rukai people, these gargantuan firs are known by a much more poetic name, “The tree that hits the moon.” Impressive even by west coast standards. By having hundreds of Taiwanese citizens examine the LiDAR profile images, the team could filter out tens of thousands of false leads. As it turned out, 93% of trees had been mismeasured by the automatic algorithm. Without the help of citizen scientists to sort through the…