A bizarre conspiracy theory circulating among flat Earth believers insists that the familiar trees growing in forests, parks, and gardens are not really trees at all. Instead, they are supposedly bushes or saplings compared with the colossal vegetation that once covered the planet.

According to the claim, these ancient trees stretched as high as 40 miles into the sky and had trunks measuring 2 miles across. The leafy giants allegedly disappeared during a devastating event thousands of years ago.

The theory can be traced to a YouTube video posted in 2016 by a Crimean man whose account has since been deactivated. The original upload was eventually removed from the platform.

Before its removal, however, the video was watched hundreds of thousands of times. Its ideas have survived through numerous spin off videos, including an English language dubbed version.

The video claims that a cataclysm destroyed 99% of Earth's biosphere and eliminated its immense ancient forests. Rather than offering biological remains, it presents familiar geological formations as evidence that these towering trees once existed.

Buttes, mountains, plateaus, and mesas are reinterpreted as the remains of those supposedly enormous plants. Flattop mountains, under this argument, are not mountains but severed tree stumps left behind by the catastrophe.

The video highlights Uluru in Australia, the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, and Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Images of these formations are placed next to photographs of actual tree stumps, inviting viewers to compare their shapes.

The argument appears to rest on the idea that objects with similar outlines must share the same origin. That skips over two rather decisive differences between the formations and tree stumps, namely their materials and their enormous difference in scale.

The theory goes even further by claiming that rock itself is not actually rock. All of Earth's rocky material is instead described as rubble from the destruction of the ancient leafy giants.

There are, unsurprisingly, fundamental differences between rocks and trees. As an arborist explained to Quartz, a tree is a living organic object composed mostly of carbon, while rock is inorganic, nonliving, and made from minerals.

The giant tree theory has been debunked repeatedly, including by Snopes. The fact checking outlet also addressed a related claim that Devil's Tower once possessed a system of roots.

That root story did not originate with geological research or evidence presented by scientists. It came from a satirical page, making its later treatment as a serious claim an example of Poe's law in action.

One of the more perplexing elements is the theory's popularity within flat Earth circles. Giant prehistoric trees have no obvious connection to the unsupported claim that Earth is a flat disk rather than the globe established by evidence.

The supposed presence of trees reaching 40 miles into the sky would also create questions that the theory does not address. On a flat disk, their balance, distribution, movement, and immense size would seemingly become significant concerns.

The scenario becomes even stranger when giant pine cones and strong winds enter the picture. A falling pine cone in America would allegedly be enormous, while the theory offers no explanation for whether its impact could send the imagined flat disk spinning.

There is also the possibility that the entire story was another exercise in Poe's law. The original creator may have been testing how outrageous an idea flat Earth believers might accept, although the video's actual intent remains uncertain.

Whatever its origin, the theory survives because photographs of geological formations can be presented beside tree stumps that share a superficial resemblance. Its case depends on treating that resemblance as proof while brushing aside composition, scale, geology, and biology.