How to Build a Thousand-Year-Old Tree | Hacker News Reader

How to Build a Thousand-Year-Old Tree

noemamag.com

95 pointsmatthewjpo13 comments

The site seems to have been HN'd:

Just a fascinating picture into a field I know little about.

It is frustrating that deforestation still continues at its own pace with little regard for the sometimes irreversible loss of forests throughout the world. I guess this gives us a little hope that we can simulate old wood in new wood trees, but once the old wood trees are gone, they're gone.

There is quite a lot of tree planting going in the UK. Which is good. Unfortunately 'trees planted' is the only metric anyone seems to care about. Many of the trees are the wrong species for the location or planted at the wrong time of year or not planted properly. And often there is no plan to water, protect or otherwise maintain them when they are young and vulnerable. Consequently many of these trees don't survive beyond a few months.

I will over-simplify, but it works!

  Go to Italy/Greece/Spain.
  Buy a small piece of land (half an acre is more than enough)
  Plant an olive tree (plant two or three as a backup)
  Wait 1000 years 
  One thousand year old tree.

Why those 3 countries in particular? Wouldn’t this work anywhere (provided it’s not in a war zone or a volcano zone etc)?

You are... unlikely to grow an olive tree successfully in Toronto.

Even for other kinds of long-lived trees, places without big ice storms, hurricanes, etc. that would prematurely end the tree are probably safer bets.

Wait a few decades and olive trees should grow fine in Toronto. Climate change ftw

Gotta pick the right environment+tree combination.

You could always settle in the Mojave, plant a grove of bristlecone pines instead.

I don't know if more boreal climates support longevity, I think it has to be some combination of temperate + dry + safe from natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes

Southern Arizona works too. The Sonoran is a very wet dessert.

>The Sonoran is a very wet dessert

a wet dessert sounds similar to tira-misspell?

Dang it. A Sonoran wet dessert is a raspado.

The article is not about growing a genuinely thousand year old tree.

The article is about human deforestation meaning there is an age gap of trees so there is no generation turning a thousand for the first time — no trees that will become ancient before the current ancients die. They are trying techniques to make younger trees have characteristics of older trees in order to keep the ecological presence.

Interestingly enough, I just passed by this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Forest-Radicals-California-Redw...

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