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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. The title of oldest tree

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Speaker 1: in the world is surprisingly enough up for grabs, since

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Speaker 1: about a majestically gnarled bristle cone pine in California has

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Speaker 1: held the designation, only to be usurped by an up

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Speaker 1: and comer discovered on a Swedish mountaintop, and not to

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Speaker 1: be outdone. A controversial fine in a Chilean forest has

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Speaker 1: tree aficionados wondering whether an ancient Cyprus could actually be hundreds, yes,

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Speaker 1: hundreds of years older than any known living tree in existence.

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Speaker 1: With the competition literally growing, Crowning the world's oldest tree

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Speaker 1: is much more complicated than one might think. Let's look

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Speaker 1: at the contenders. Before the Egyptians had even started constructing

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Speaker 1: the famed Pyramids of Giza, there was a tiny tree

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Speaker 1: putting down roots in the White Mountains of eastern California.

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Speaker 1: This tree, bristle cone pine, dubbed Methuselah, is still growing

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Speaker 1: in California's Great Basin and was once believed to be

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Speaker 1: the world's oldest tree. Tree ring data from a core

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Speaker 1: sample of its trunk estimates its age at four thousand,

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Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty three years old. Another candidate is

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Speaker 1: a Patagonian cyprus that was found in Chile in two

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Speaker 1: known fondly as grand a Boilo, meaning great grandfather, This

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Speaker 1: particular tree, found growing in a ravine in Chile's Allers

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Speaker 1: Costeo National Park, is estimated at five thousand, four hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighty four years old, which is more than six

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Speaker 1: hundred years older than Methuselah. However, because researchers estimated the

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Speaker 1: tree's age based on a partial sample of the core,

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Speaker 1: there is some controversy surrounding the accuracy of the estimate.

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Speaker 1: But on a mountaintop in Sweden, a spruce tree has

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Speaker 1: kept its tenacious hold on life for nearly ten thousand year.

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Speaker 1: The spruce, which took root at the end of the

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Speaker 1: world's last ice age in about seven thousand, five hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty two b c e, was discovered by scientists

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Speaker 1: surveying mountain tree species back in two thousand four. Its

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Speaker 1: age was confirmed by carbon dating in two thousand eight.

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Speaker 1: It was a surprise to researchers because science had previously

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Speaker 1: thought that this particular type of spruce had been introduced

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Speaker 1: to the area much more recently than that. The find

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Speaker 1: has researchers revising their timelines of when animals and people

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Speaker 1: immigrating across the land mass close to shrinking glaciers may

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Speaker 1: have introduced the spruces and other trees too. Fossilized acorns

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Speaker 1: found in the area may have been brought by humans

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Speaker 1: as they traveled. The discovery of the Mountain spruce is

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Speaker 1: not without controversy. However, The trees remarkable age is attributed

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Speaker 1: to its roots system, which has been alive for at

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Speaker 1: least four generations. The visible part of the tree, the trunk, branches, cones,

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Speaker 1: and needles, only lives for about six hundred years, so

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Speaker 1: when the trunk dies, a cloned stem takes root to

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Speaker 1: replace it. The ability to replace a new trunk from

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Speaker 1: the tree's root system has been key to which lengthy survival.

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Speaker 1: But is a long living clone growing from a generation

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Speaker 1: spanning root system still the same tree. It's a question

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Speaker 1: that scientists and record book publishers are still debating. One thing, though,

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Speaker 1: is certain. If you consider that all the world's oldest

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Speaker 1: trees have lived anywhere from five thousand to nearly ten

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Speaker 1: thousand years, they're each a living example of nature's ingenuity.

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Speaker 1: While even the shortest lived trees, like most fruit trees,

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Speaker 1: can survive for fifty years, some species, like pine trees,

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Speaker 1: grow so slowly that even at the age of forty,

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Speaker 1: they may only be six inches or about fifteen centimeters tall.

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Speaker 1: This slow and study wins the race strategy appears to

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Speaker 1: be a winning one at least when trees are young,

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Speaker 1: but changes as trees age. A study published in the

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Speaker 1: journal Nature reports that the older tree is the faster

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Speaker 1: it will grow. Previously prevailing thought was that tree growth

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Speaker 1: slowed with age, but now researchers know that the largest

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Speaker 1: and oldest trees can increase their wood, bark, and leaf

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Speaker 1: mass by hundred pounds about six every year. And unlike

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Speaker 1: most living creatures, whose cells change and break down each

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Speaker 1: day that passes, many trees don't have an age limit.

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Speaker 1: While trees can come to being cut down or to fire,

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Speaker 1: insect infestations, diseases, or natural occurrences like lightning, some trees

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Speaker 1: could technically live indefinitely and whatever their age. The world's

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Speaker 1: oldest trees are vital not only to the health of

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Speaker 1: their respective environments, but as a measure of climate change.

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Speaker 1: By studying the tree's core samples, Scientists are able to

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Speaker 1: see the impact of environmental changes on trees and their surrounding,

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Speaker 1: and the study of tree rings is called dendro chronology.

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Speaker 1: Using the width of a tree ring, which signifies a

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Speaker 1: tree's growth in a single year, scientists can verify whether

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Speaker 1: it was a year of drought resulting in a narrow ring,

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Speaker 1: or of excess moisture resulting in a wide ring. Identifying

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Speaker 1: similar bands across a range of trees helps scientists connect

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Speaker 1: data projections to a timeline and helps identify which trees

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Speaker 1: survive a changing climate. Today's episode is based on the

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Speaker 1: article what is the oldest tree in the World on

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com written by Laurie L. Dove.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio and partnership with

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang.

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