It is not everyday that such a remarkable find is made on our planet, a living database that can reveal much about the state of our planet for the last one thousand or more years.
Adonis, a Bosnian Pine, has been accurately determined to be a minimum of 1075 years old.
Quite amazing that this grove has somehow evaded being made into lumber or lodging all this time. What kinds of information might we expect to gleam from studying these ancient living beings?
That grove of very old pines reminds me of a very old grove of quaking aspens, something like 80,000 years old, called Pando, located in Utah, and estimated having total weight of like 13 million pounds (the heaviest known living organism).
There is apparently one even older than the famed Methuselah, according to the list I found.
Quote:A specimen of this species, located in the White Mountains of California was measured by Tom Harlan to be 5,062 years old in 2012.[4] The identity of the specimen is being kept secret by Harlan.[10] This is the oldest known tree in North America, and the oldest known individual tree in the world, although a clonal individual, nicknamed "Old Tjikko", a Norway spruce in Sweden is 9,550 years old.[11][12]
The previously oldest named specimen of this species, "Methuselah", is also located in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest of the White Mountains. Methuselah is 4,844 years old, as measured by annual ring count on a small core taken with an increment borer. Its exact location is also kept secret.
Among the White Mountain specimens, the oldest trees are found on north-facing slopes, with an average of 2,000 years, as compared to the 1,000 year average on the southern slopes.[13] The climate and the durability of their wood can preserve them long after death, with dead trees as old as 7,000 years persisting next to live ones.[13]
Aspens have an amazing root system and if one considers the age of a root system to be somewhat akin to a community, the duration of such is far greater than any individual tree, to be sure.
elteSep 15, 2016 05:52 PM (This post was last modified: Sep 15, 2016 06:45 PM by elte.)
Indeed, since Pando has been sending up new tree trunks through root suckers, I wonder when (or if) the roots of the parent and offspring eventually (not considering the death of one of the two trunks involved) lose the original root that joins them together as truly one entity. It seems the original joining root could wither and die, in which case it would then be true that Pando isn't a single organism after all. If the original root lives as long as both original trunks, then all the trunks of Pando are connected through a network of original sucker roots. Technically, maybe those sucker roots quit doing much if anything after a while.
How about Canada, Scheherazade? According to the list, it’s the Subalpine Larch, but different sources provide conflicting information.
The clonal tree is in Norway. The one dated to be 5062 in 2012 is not named and it's location is being kept secret though it is in the same forest as Methuselah, as I read the paragraph.
In any event, the age of these trees is astounding and they are to be respectfully learned from as they have a lifespan that makes that of our species seem as short as many seasonal insects.
(Sep 15, 2016 12:55 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(Sep 15, 2016 03:50 AM)scheherazade Wrote: There is apparently one even older than the famed Methuselah, according to the list I found.
That’s what I thought at first, too, but it’s a clonal tree. Methuselah is the oldest individual tree.
How about Canada, Scheherazade? According to the list, it’s the Subalpine Larch, but different sources provide conflicting information.
I think you have found the oldest living specimen. There is another exciting discovery though, related to Pine fossils found in Nova Scotia.
Quote:Nova Scotia can lay claim to the oldest known pine tree fossils, which date back to the time of the dinosaurs.
The fossils, which measure between seven and 20 millimeters and are approximately 140 million years old, were discovered in a gypsum quarry near Windsor that is operated by Fundy Gypsum.