High in the dry mountain woods of the eastCaliforniaThere exists a living tree that predates the pyramids of Giza and the ancient city-state of Babylon — yet its exact location remains unknown.
The tree known as Methuselah, named for a notably long-lived figure in the Book of Genesis, is believed to have begun growing approximately 4,857 years ago in the White Mountains, located north of Death Valley.
This would place its germination date around 2,833 B.C., almost 3,000 years prior to the establishment of the Roman Empire and older than every one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Researchers think it might be the oldest or second-oldest known living tree — excluding clonal colonies, where trees continuously die and regrow as part of a single long-lived organism.
Nevertheless, the Forest Service does not reveal the specific location of the Methuselah tree and has not identified it in any manner, to safeguard it from acts of destruction.
Methuselah is the oldest tree recognized in the Methuselah Grove, located at an elevation of almost 10,000 feet within the current boundaries of Inyo National Forest.
It’s a notable example of the Great Basinbristlecone pine, formally known aspinus longaeva. Since they have evolved to survive in such extreme conditions, the trees are remarkably strong and immune to diseases.
Via a method known as “strip barking,” even a small fragment of the tree can stay alive after the rest has died, with thin threads of living material spiraling upward through a thick layer of dead wood.
But bristlecone pines are not the only long-lived trees on the planet. Certain scientists think there isA Patagonian cypress tree located in the rainy mountains of Chile that is approximately 5,400 years old.
Referred to as the Millennial Alerce, also known as Gran Abuelo (Spanish for ‘grandfather’), the tree’s age was determined through a novel statistical approach that isnot yet broadly acceptedamong scholars, instead of the conventional method of tallying tree rings inside the trunk.
Clonal colonies—meaning groups of trees that have all grown from the same old parent plant—can endure for thousands of years, even as the individual trees come and go.
A single colony of quaking aspen in Utah, referred to as Pando,is believed to be between 9,000 and 16,000 years in agebut is suffering from the effects of climate change.
There is also a bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains that could be older than Methuselah and even more hidden. Back in 2009,as stated by tree age researcher Peter M. Brown, another researcher named Tom Harlan started examining old tree samples that were left to him by his predecessor.
Harlan reportedly discovered a sample he believed to be 5,062 years old and informed Brown that the tree it came from was still living. However, the actual sample appears to be missing, and if Harlan knew the tree’s location, he took it with him to his grave.
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