The World’s Oldest Tree Lives in Sweden | Hacker News Reader

The World’s Oldest Tree Lives in Sweden

swedesinthestates.com

163 pointsbifrost34 comments

I'd always thought that the Methuselah Tree in California was the oldest living tree. Apparently there's some disagreement, as Old Tjikko is a clonal tree, meaning the trunks come and go but the roots stay living underneath [1].

So if you're counting non-clone trees, Methuselah is the oldest. If you're counting clonal trees, some Quaking Aspens are believed to be between 80,000 and 1,000,000 years old [2].

[1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/old-tjikko

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)

There's also Prometheus, which was older than Methusaleh but was cut down by people looking for the old trees. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree)

When I had ambitions for general interest blogging, I had an article kicking around in my head on the dangers of being a superlative tree.

Prometheus was the oldest tree, killed by a core sample.

Tree of Ténéré, the most isolated tree in the world, felled by a drunk driver. [1]

The Senator, the biggest cypress in the world was lit afire by an arsonist. [2]

Kiidk'yaas, a rare golden spruce, was felled by someone protesting logging. [3]

I also remember reading about the 2nd (largest, tallest, widest?) tree in the world being lit alight by someone smoking meth in its branches, but I can't find the source or name.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senator_(tree)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiidk%27yaas

If you visit Muir Woods north of SF, they refuse to tell you which tree is the tallest in the park.

For good reason. People suck.

Well there's always a tallest tree in the forest, if the current tallest is cut down, another becomes the tallest, so there's no particular gain or loss over and above any other big tree.

Which is exactly the point: the park does not want to lose any big old tree, and singling out superlative individuals would make them targets in a way that the collective isn't. People out for the attention of attacking a superlative individual won't just fall back to any random tree.

The Kiidk'yaas one is bad-ass! I hope they make a movie out of him.

Edit: They did! [1]

[1] https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/film-review-hadw...

The meth example you're thinking of is probably The Senator, which you've already linked.

I think you're right.

My reading of the Wikipedia article re: Kiidk'yaas suggests that it was felled by someone protesting protesting logging.

Terrible. Reminds me of this Far Side cartoon.

https://jennafeld.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/tree.jpeg (Link to the image on a random person’s WordPress site)

> some Quaking Aspens are believed to be between 80,000 and 1,000,000 years old [2].

1,000,000? I don't see anything in the Wikipedia article referring to anything higher than 100,000. Was this a typo, or am I missing something?

I got that figure from the Norway Spruce article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_abies#Longevity

edit: I've also found this snippet: Individuals may reach ages in excess of 1 million years [1]

[1] https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/46/1/25/262587

There's speculation that this some yew trees may be of similar age to Methuselah, notably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llangernyw_Yew & http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7505...

Surprised it's such a small tree, more like a Bonzai tree. Though as mentioned in the article, "Big trees cannot get this old".

"The world’s oldest tree, Old Tjikko, is a 9,500-year-old Norwegian Spruce tree that was discovered in 2004 by Professor Leif Kullman, and to this day remains the world’s oldest tree."

The trunk itself is estimated to be only a few hundred years old. When the trunk dies but the root system is still alive, it may sprout a new trunk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tjikko

Here's a good 1 minute podcast about it - https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/2AA00080-...

I often think that tidbits like this should be kept local or private. I can imagine some jackass trying to chop this one down now, but it seems like it might survive it as long as they don't kill the roots.

Still awesome stuff.

I wonder what percentage of the world's trees have been carbon dated. I'd bet that effectively 0% of the world's trees have been carbon dated and that there remain older ones out there.

~0% of sampled trees does not necessarily mean ~0% certainty that we have found the oldest tree, since tree ages are correlated strongly with each other in local neighborhoods. We know where to look to find "oldish" trees and then narrow our search there. No need to sample trees from a new growth forest to be reasonably certain how old they are.

Suppose there's a thousand square kilometers of new growth forest. Is every tree in that area new? What if there's a tree that substantially predates the others and is now surrounded by new growth?

I'd agree that percentage tested isn't directly the same as likelihood we've found the oldest, but I do think there's a strong correlation.

Carbon dating only works on a dead organism.

If you look at the trunk of a tree, almost all of it is actually dead. There is only a relative thin layer of tissue (the cambium) under the bark that is alive. The same is true for roots (with minor differences).

No where near as old but there’s a 1450 - 1900 year old Oak tree in Denmark:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongeegen

Strangely there were three ancient oak trees close to each other until a few decades back, the other two died recently.

12000 year old beech - http://oltw.blogspot.com/2011/12/12000-year-old-antarctic-be...

There is a research project [1] and book [2] by Rachel Sussman and Hans Ulrich Obrist called »The Oldest Living Things«, which features this and many more fascinating trees, moss, and other plants.

[1] http://www.rachelsussman.com/oltw

[2] http://www.oldestlivingthings.com/

How do they use carbon 14 to date this? Isn’t it used to date dead things? And if the trunk comes and goes, the bark is never really old, is it?

Would have been fun to see this tree in the film Midsommar, but it would have been terrible if it was damaged somehow (film makers aren't always they best at keeping nature intact, just look at the Maltese beach ecosystem which was destroyed during the filming of the GoT Dothraki wedding scenes).

Midsommar was recorded in Hungary in any case.

Is it any good, as a Swede I haven’t seen it. It’d be too funny seeing små grodorna portrayed as demonic again (see also: Minority Report)

very beautifully filmed, but i couldn't finish it

Oh! TIL

Not only film makers, but you can be sure a lot of instagramers will want to go if it becomes famous...

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tjikko

According to it, Old Tjikko is "the oldest known Norway spruce"

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