World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border | Hacker News Reader

World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

sciencenorway.no

239 pointsManheim61 comments

Just to be clear, the tree is found in Dalarna in Sweden, though this is indeed East of Trysil in Norway. Since Sciencenorway.no (!) is a Norwegian outlet, they need to at least attempt to make their articles relevant for Norway.

The outlet is the English version of Forskning.no. Forskning means research in Norwegian, but in this instance it really means science. Their focus is to bring news about what Norwegian scientists are up to with popular science articles for the masses. That's why some of their articles seem a tad tabloid at times.

The tradition in Norway is that the most tabloid articles are published during the main summer vacation, when newspapers employ interns and temp journalists. We even have a word for such articles: Agurknytt. It means cucumber news, and implies that the article is desperately trying to make news out of something that isn't.

> Just to be clear, the tree is found in Dalarna in Sweden

They point it out in the introduction: "discovered a tree up on Fulufjället – in Sweden just east of Trysil municipality in Norway" also it says "near the Norwegian-Swedish border" in the headline.

Also, it is only about 4km from the border. This is "near" in this context (context being relatively unpopulated area with not much things except for nature within 4km).

So equivalent to popular science for the US crowd.

I'm curious, why 'cucumber' news? Just due to the harvest time of the plant, or is there some cultural significance to the term?

Apparently it's from German around 1780, for the time during the summer when the cucumbers ripen, everyone is on vacation, and business is slow. That's what the Danish wikipedia entry says, at least.

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agurketid#Ophav

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season#Other_names

We have the same expression in Dutch: "komkommertijd".

The Dutch Wikipedia mentions English, German or Jiddisch as possible sources: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komkommertijd

Same in Polish "sezon ogórkowy"

Same in Estonia, "hapukurgihooaeg". Literal translation of the German "Sauregurkenzeit".

Everytime tehre is a funny word in German E.g. "Hechtsuppe" I assume it to be Jiddisch or Rotwelsch.

Sauregurkenzeit

Ah, so the US "dog-days of summer". Not going to lie, I prefer the silly-season nomenclature, it captures the lack of motivation and malaise that seems to set in during the height of summer much better. Thanks for the explanation, very interesting.

English "dog-days" is just a translation of Latin "caniculares dies", which came from the time of visibility before sunrise of the "Dog Star" a.k.a. Sirius.

"Cucumber time" is the season, where news paper doesn't have anything to report on than cucumbers.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cuc2.htm

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agurketid

In Dutch it is "komkommertijd" [0], which also literally translates to "cucumber time". It has the exact same meaning.

[0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komkommertijd

Other examples would be, according to Wikipedia, "silly season" in english, "serpiente de verano" (summer snake) in spanish, "Sommerloch" in german, and a bunch of others. Very common phenomenon.

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

«Silly season/cucumber time»

Harvest time, indeed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season

The corresponding Swedish term is "burknyheter" (canned news) I believe. For slow seasons, news are pulled from the can.

There is also "rötmånad", ("rot month") which refers to the time of year it's warm enough for things to go bad quickly.

In Spain it used to be serpientes de verano (summer snakes) but not sure if Loch Ness is still popular.

That title is rather clickbaity for a "science" magazine. Crucially, the tree prominently featured in the large picture is not 10,000 years old and only its root system originates from that period:

> Today Old Tjikko’s tree trunk is only five metres high. Although the spruce may have had many such trunks over the millennia, the tree's root system has survived all these years. No part of today’s living tree is as old as 9 500 years, but genetically, the tree is exactly the same individual as when it began to germinate.

Indeed if we allow equating the plant to the age and extent of its root system (genetically the same organism, although no part of the present plant is as old), I already found this other tree root system named "Pando" in Utah, USA, that is estimated to be up to 14,000 years old - making the Swedish spruce's claim to world's oldest dubious:

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

Pando is also thought to be the largest and heaviest known single organism, covering 43 hectares and weighing 6,000 tons.

The cool thing about it and what does give it the 10k year feel is that it grows in a spot that was only low enough for trees to grow 10k years ago because the mountain has risen 100 meters since, and it couldn’t start growing there now.

Sort of. The article also says that spruce trees slowly migrate via spreading their root systems. So this tree "system" probably originated lower along the tree line and migrated up over the centuries.

The article has conflicting information on this point.

Unsurprinsingly, Wikipedia has a list of the oldest known trees in the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

What is a "tree"?

None of the leaves on Methuselah are 5000 years old, but we say that the tree is that old.

Kind of a Tree of Theseus situation going on.

Assuming you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_(tree)

It says that its trunk is about 5,000 y.o. as counted through growth rings. I would think most people would understand this to be the proper age of a "tree".

You are 10 years old, I am also 10 years old. We are all 10 years old. [10]

[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/your-body-is-youn...

The river is a thousand years old. The oldest water in it just came from the spring a few days ago.

Yet take away any water younger than a week, and the river is gone.

How do you measure an age of a process defined by change?

While its true that most cells in our body replace once about seven years, humans do have e.g. neuron cells that are about as old as the individual: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-body-replace-itself-s...

yes, one tree with multiple trunks. Many trees will drop their leaves annually, then recreate new leaves next spring. Turns out the spruce can do this with its entire trunk. I found it fascinating and enlightening, and learned something new.

IANAB (B = botanist) but I believe that many species of tree can grow more than one trunk and that the spruce is not unusual in this respect.

Aspen trees do this.

For anyone in areas with Aspen trees, they are a single organism since they spread via roots. That is why you see groves of Aspen trees that seem to be sharply delineated, it's all one tree.

Biology is just fascinating/scary like this, but knowing this makes the experience of standing in an aspen grove during the height of summer even more powerful. It's all one connected organism thst has spread so far that you can't see anything else of the mountain while standing in the middle of the grove.

Yes, most if not all trees can do this. It was a strategy called coppicing that allowed more lumber to be grown from the same root system.

Likely true: most cells in your body are younger than your age too.

I thought Pandora is 80,000 years old. Where did you get 14,000?

From the URL I provided as source (Wikipedia)? On the "oldest trees" Wiki page it also says that there had been previous aging resulting with much older estimates, but these were invalidated by newer results with lower estimates.

Crucially the tree is in Sweden and not Norway xD

This blew my mind. Gives an idea of the timescales we're talking about:

"The reason why Old Tjikko now finds itself on the barren rock near Trysil – more than a hundred metres higher than what is considered the tree line – is simply that the spruce tree rose along with the mountain it grows on during the land uplift that followed the ice age."

The article conflates two phenomena...

1. The uplift of the land after the glacier melt.

2. The fact that spruces "multiply" by spreading out their roots and can thereby migrate over centuries.

The 2nd point sort of dances on the definition of "reproduction" and "individual". Genetically this tree is identical to it's original "cloned parent" from 9500 years ago, but there are also "other?" spruce trees lower down the mountain along the tree line that are it's "siblings?"/"self?" - now detached from one another.

That's the thing with nature - it doesn't always follow definitions we place on it. net-net, this isn't quite the same as finding a tree that's individually born and still 10000 years old.

For the bristlecone pines in California and Nevada, a primary cause of death for old trees is that erosion slowly exposes their root system over time until it kills them. So in a sense, they can outlive the mountains they grow upon.

Reminds me of a story of Donal Rusk Currey and his unfortunate undoing while doing his job.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-accide...

One last note, as I've been to The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in recent years, it's an AMAZING panacea of views up high as the eye can see. I THINK you can see almost all of the Sierra Nevada across the valley in a couple points, and its breath taking how beautiful it is.

Worth visiting, but as a short fat white guy in technology - be ready for the thin air, and absolutely grueling hikes if you explore. It's SOOOO worth it for anyone in the Bay Area to make this trek.

Isn't the "oldest tree" always "still growing", until it doesn't grow? Then it's dead? Then it's not the oldest tree anymore?

In other news, the oldest human alive is still aging!

Had to read this in reader mode because while the text of the article was in English, the cookie pop up was in what I’m guessing is Norwegian, and covered most of the space where the text is. Who does that?

Every news source on the planet it seems. This source didn't localize to your language (I had the same frustration), but every website seems to do this, this one just didn't localize the cookie prompt.

Not going to lie, it seems a bit presumptuous to expect that a local Norwegian source has every aspect of their site optimized for English readers. Aside from the Norwegian text, it was a standard cookie click-through.

Edit: this reads hostile, I mainly want to point out that not every site online is in English and expecting that shouldn't be the norm. I've read excellent Chinese only articles through translation services, it seems unfair to expect everyone to default to English to share their knowledge. Especially now with AI translation being a thing, it seems unfair to criticize a local news source for focusing on their local language. Reading non-English sites is easier now than ever, and translation errors are worth being able to read about more of the world's ideas. There are ideas that don't spread to the wider web simply because the author wrote them in their native language. When it's so easy to get a machine translation that isn't perfect but is serviceable, I have trouble complaining about language issues.

> This source didn't localize to your language (I had the same frustration), but every website seems to do this, this one just didn't localize the cookie prompt.

> Not going to lie, it seems a bit presumptuous to expect that a local Norwegian source has every aspect of their site optimized for English readers.

Not at all, when they're presenting an article written in English.

Trolls, of course!

Speaking of trolls and Norway, if you have never seen André Øvredal‘s Trollhunter, you should find a copy. Easily one of my top five film festival discoveries, and generally well received by anyone I’ve shown it to.

The setup is a bunch of journalism students trying to do an expose on a man who they believe is a bear poacher, and then it’s down the rabbit hole for another hour.

They will come and eat your cookie!

> No part of today’s living tree is as old as 9 500 years, but genetically, the tree is exactly the same individual as when it began to germinate.

It looks like we've found a Theseus tree!

What is the rule with Cookie notices bring in a different language? Strangely, this is the first one I have come across not in English.

Birds migrate over winters. Spruce trees migrate over ice ages...

I recently watched a german documentary "Das geheime Leben der Bäume" [1] where they visit this exact tree. Highly recommend it. The documentary is based on a novel of the same name by the author Peter Wohlleben [2].

[1]: https://www.3sat.de/film/dokumentarfilm/das-geheime-leben-de...

[2]: https://www.amazon.de/Hidden-Life-Trees-Communicate-Discover...

Did other people think before clicking on the link "I really hope they don't say where it is or provide a picture, because someone is sure to go find it and chop it down"? Has the Internet ruined me?

Quite similar, yes.

I went to comments precisely to say I really wish they'd stop bringing mass Internet attention to vulnerable wonders of nature like these. It places them in terrible danger.

The sadist with an axe is definitely a real threat as has been seen repeatedly, but even if not, the stampede of a selfie-crowd is a danger in itself for something like this. There are ancient plants that have had life-threatening damage from suddenly having unreasonable numbers of people clinging on them for photos and wearing down the grown all the way through the roots.

I certainly don't want to see this sort of reporting just to fill space during a news drought.

The tree has a website (The website honors the age of the tree by also looking like something prehistoric) [1], information about it and its location is readily available on the national park's website [2], it has a Wikipedia article [3], and of course it's on Google Maps. So I don't really think this article provides anything new.

[1]: http://www.oldtjikko.se/OldTjikkoFulufjallet.html

[2]: https://www.sverigesnationalparker.se/park/fulufjallets-nati...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tjikko

If you happen to be in California and want to see the oldest non-clonal trees in the world, visit the Bristlecone Pines in the white mountains near Mammoth. But maybe do it soon... https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-06-27/drought...

sad

There's a list:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

Absolutely wild to see the surrounding land "grow" this spruce 1000 meters above the typical tree line in the region.

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