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RE: Remarkably Determined Trees (part 2)
What an amazing sight....
The planet's trees have seen plenty of history pass by their trunks. In fact, they began to populate Earth 385 million years ago, toward the end of the Devonian period. Considered living historical records, the organisms can withstand generations of development and change.
But which tree has been around the longest?
Until 2013, the oldest individual tree in the world was Methuselah, a 4,845-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California. Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research Group then announced the age of another P. longaeva also located in the White Mountains — this one 5,062 years old.
Thank you for that link, I found this statement amazing....
The tree's true age was revealed by carbon-14 dating its root system. According to a statement from Umeå University, scientists found four generations of spruce remains at the site, all with the same genetic makeup. Spruce trees can multiply with the root penetrating branches to produce exact copies of themselves, so while the individual trunk is younger, the organism has been cloning itself for at least 9,550 years.