Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. The title of oldest tree
Speaker 1: in the world is surprisingly enough up for grabs, since
Speaker 1: about a majestically gnarled bristle cone pine in California has
Speaker 1: held the designation, only to be usurped by an up
Speaker 1: and comer discovered on a Swedish mountaintop, and not to
Speaker 1: be outdone. A controversial fine in a Chilean forest has
Speaker 1: tree aficionados wondering whether an ancient Cyprus could actually be hundreds, yes,
Speaker 1: hundreds of years older than any known living tree in existence.
Speaker 1: With the competition literally growing, Crowning the world's oldest tree
Speaker 1: is much more complicated than one might think. Let's look
Speaker 1: at the contenders. Before the Egyptians had even started constructing
Speaker 1: the famed Pyramids of Giza, there was a tiny tree
Speaker 1: putting down roots in the White Mountains of eastern California.
Speaker 1: This tree, bristle cone pine, dubbed Methuselah, is still growing
Speaker 1: in California's Great Basin and was once believed to be
Speaker 1: the world's oldest tree. Tree ring data from a core
Speaker 1: sample of its trunk estimates its age at four thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty three years old. Another candidate is
Speaker 1: a Patagonian cyprus that was found in Chile in two
Speaker 1: known fondly as grand a Boilo, meaning great grandfather, This
Speaker 1: particular tree, found growing in a ravine in Chile's Allers
Speaker 1: Costeo National Park, is estimated at five thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty four years old, which is more than six
Speaker 1: hundred years older than Methuselah. However, because researchers estimated the
Speaker 1: tree's age based on a partial sample of the core,
Speaker 1: there is some controversy surrounding the accuracy of the estimate.
Speaker 1: But on a mountaintop in Sweden, a spruce tree has
Speaker 1: kept its tenacious hold on life for nearly ten thousand year.
Speaker 1: The spruce, which took root at the end of the
Speaker 1: world's last ice age in about seven thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two b c e, was discovered by scientists
Speaker 1: surveying mountain tree species back in two thousand four. Its
Speaker 1: age was confirmed by carbon dating in two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: It was a surprise to researchers because science had previously
Speaker 1: thought that this particular type of spruce had been introduced
Speaker 1: to the area much more recently than that. The find
Speaker 1: has researchers revising their timelines of when animals and people
Speaker 1: immigrating across the land mass close to shrinking glaciers may
Speaker 1: have introduced the spruces and other trees too. Fossilized acorns
Speaker 1: found in the area may have been brought by humans
Speaker 1: as they traveled. The discovery of the Mountain spruce is
Speaker 1: not without controversy. However, The trees remarkable age is attributed
Speaker 1: to its roots system, which has been alive for at
Speaker 1: least four generations. The visible part of the tree, the trunk, branches, cones,
Speaker 1: and needles, only lives for about six hundred years, so
Speaker 1: when the trunk dies, a cloned stem takes root to
Speaker 1: replace it. The ability to replace a new trunk from
Speaker 1: the tree's root system has been key to which lengthy survival.
Speaker 1: But is a long living clone growing from a generation
Speaker 1: spanning root system still the same tree. It's a question
Speaker 1: that scientists and record book publishers are still debating. One thing, though,
Speaker 1: is certain. If you consider that all the world's oldest
Speaker 1: trees have lived anywhere from five thousand to nearly ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, they're each a living example of nature's ingenuity.
Speaker 1: While even the shortest lived trees, like most fruit trees,
Speaker 1: can survive for fifty years, some species, like pine trees,
Speaker 1: grow so slowly that even at the age of forty,
Speaker 1: they may only be six inches or about fifteen centimeters tall.
Speaker 1: This slow and study wins the race strategy appears to
Speaker 1: be a winning one at least when trees are young,
Speaker 1: but changes as trees age. A study published in the
Speaker 1: journal Nature reports that the older tree is the faster
Speaker 1: it will grow. Previously prevailing thought was that tree growth
Speaker 1: slowed with age, but now researchers know that the largest
Speaker 1: and oldest trees can increase their wood, bark, and leaf
Speaker 1: mass by hundred pounds about six every year. And unlike
Speaker 1: most living creatures, whose cells change and break down each
Speaker 1: day that passes, many trees don't have an age limit.
Speaker 1: While trees can come to being cut down or to fire,
Speaker 1: insect infestations, diseases, or natural occurrences like lightning, some trees
Speaker 1: could technically live indefinitely and whatever their age. The world's
Speaker 1: oldest trees are vital not only to the health of
Speaker 1: their respective environments, but as a measure of climate change.
Speaker 1: By studying the tree's core samples, Scientists are able to
Speaker 1: see the impact of environmental changes on trees and their surrounding,
Speaker 1: and the study of tree rings is called dendro chronology.
Speaker 1: Using the width of a tree ring, which signifies a
Speaker 1: tree's growth in a single year, scientists can verify whether
Speaker 1: it was a year of drought resulting in a narrow ring,
Speaker 1: or of excess moisture resulting in a wide ring. Identifying
Speaker 1: similar bands across a range of trees helps scientists connect
Speaker 1: data projections to a timeline and helps identify which trees
Speaker 1: survive a changing climate. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article what is the oldest tree in the World on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com written by Laurie L. Dove.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio and partnership with
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang.
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