The world's oldest trees were growing when the Great Pyramid of Giza was stuff built and were once thousands of years old when Julius Caesar came to power.
To determine a tree's age, scientists collect a cadre sample from the plant's wiring and then count its rings. This dating of tree rings is tabbed dendrochronology and it can be a valuable tool for measuring tree age and studying environmental changes over time.
However, due to rotting and the thickness of a tree’s trunk, it's not unchangingly possible to get well-constructed cores. Often tree month are unswayable without it has died, but it is possible to get a cadre without killing it with a specialist tool that can pericope a very narrow sample.
In addition, an infinitesimal percentage of old trees have been cored in the first place — equal to a study published in Nature in 2015, Earth is home to over 3 trillion trees.
Here are the longest-lived trees overly to be discovered on Earth.
1. Prometheus (at least 4,900 years old when it was cut down)
Donald Currey on a limb of Prometheus, which was unscientific to be 4,900 years old when it was cut down. (Image credit: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images)
Prometheus, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) in Wheeler Peak, Nevada, lived tropical to 5,000 years surpassing it was cut lanugo in 1964. It remains the longest-lived tree definitively documented.
Prometheus met its end when geographer Donald R. Currey, who was studying ice age glaciology and had been granted permission to take cadre samples from pines in the park, cut it lanugo (also with permission). Currey counted 4,862 rings and unscientific the tree was increasingly than 4,900-years-old.The stump Currey used to count the rings was not taken from the very marrow of the tree, so the tree was certainly older than 4,862 years.
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There are competing accounts as to why the tree was felled, equal to the National Park Service. The most popular version is that Currey's coring tool got stuck and he cut lanugo the tree as a result. Others suggest he cut lanugo the tree to get a largest count of its rings. Today, a piece of the tree can be viewed at the Great Basin Visitor Center in Nevada at the Great Basin National Park.
2. Methuselah (at least 4,600 years old)
The location of Methuselah in California's White Mountains is a secret. (Image credit: hlsnow/Getty Images)
Since 1957, this bristlecone pine has held the title of the world's oldest living tree. Methuselah was discovered by famed tree researcher Edmund Schulman, a scientist at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. He found Methuselah's age without taking cores from many bristlecones in the zone and counting the rings.
To protect Methuselah from tourists, who might forfeiture the tree by touching it or walking near its roots, the U.S. Forest Service has long kept Methuselah's word-for-word location a secret and does not release photographs of it. The tree is somewhere withal the 4.5-mile (7.2 kilometers) Methuselah Trail in the White Mountains of Inyo National Forest in California.
3. Mystery tree (4,000 to 4,900 years old)
The mystery tree (not pictured) is thought to have been identified from a cadre sample was moreover a bristlecone pine. (Image credit: Piriya Photography/Getty Images)
In the 2010s, rumors began to circulate that Schulman and his research team had unwittingly placid cadre samples from a tree older than Methuselah. Surpassing his death in 2013, Tom Harlan, a scientist who worked with Schulman, said he found a cadre sample from flipside bristlecone pine tree that was at least 4,800 years old in the archives of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.
However, Matthew Salzer, a research scientist at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, has not been worldly-wise to find that core. Salzer and a colleague used old notes to find the tree they believed Harlan was talking about, but they did not get a good unbearable sample to verify its age, equal to the Washington Post. However, based on their imperfect core, they said the tree could be older than Methuselah but probably not as old as Prometheus. This tree is moreover in the White Mountains of California, but its location vastitude that is secret.
4. Alerce Milenario (2,400 to 5,400 years old)
Alerce Milenario in Chile is thought to be over 5,000 years old. (Image credit: Martin Bernetti/Getty Images)
The Alerce Milenario or Gran Abuelo (great-grandfather), in Chile's Alerce Costero National Park, made headlines in 2022 when researchers used computer modeling to estimate its age at 5,484 years.
The trunk of the alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides), moreover tabbed a Patagonian cypress, is over 13 feet (4.3 meters) — so big that researchers could get only a partial core. On that core, they counted 2,400 tree rings and unscientific the spare age using modeling. Equal to Science magazine, the tree was unscientific to be 5,484 years old.
This type of modeling is not yet fully wonted by the scientific community, but the cadre vacated makes this tree indisputably one of Earth's oldest. Alerce Milenario's location is not a secret, and tourists regularly visit and walk virtually its root system. Jonathan Barichivich, an environmental scientist who led the recent research into the tree, hoped the publicity this research generated would lead to increasingly efforts to protect the tree.
5. Giant sequoias (over 3,000 years old)
General Sherman in California's Sequoia National Park is thought to be over 3,000 years old. (Image credit: NPS)
Like alerces, California's giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are so large that tree coring tools often can't ratherish measure their age while the trees are alive. The most well-judged estimates of old sequoia trees often come primarily from trees that have been cut lanugo or fell due to natural causes, Peter Brown, founder of Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, which maintains a list of the world's oldest scientifically verified trees, told Live Science in an email.
Four giant sequoias over 3,000 years old have been discovered, though none are still standing. The President, in California's Sequoia National Park, is unscientific to be over 3,200 years old.
The world's largest tree, General Sherman — moreover located in Sequoia National Park — is unscientific to be about 2,200 years old.
6. BLK 227 unrobed cypress (at least 2,624 years old)
A unrobed cypress tree (Taxodium distichum) that was over 2,600 years old was identified in 2019. (Image credit: earleliason/Getty Images)
In 2019, researchers spoken the discovery of a 2,624-year-old unrobed cypress (Taxodium distichum). This unnamed tree is the oldest known living tree in eastern North America. It sits somewhere withal North Carolina's Black River, a tributary of the Cape Fear River. As with many other old trees, its precise location has not been disclosed.
Researchers found other trees that were over 2,000 years old in the same region. They took cadre samples from only a fraction of trees in the region — meaning older unrobed cypress trees might exist in the area.
7. CB-90-11 (at least 2,435 years old)
Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines aren't thought to live as long as their Great Basin relatives. (Image credit: Russell Burden/Getty Images)
Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines (Pinus aristata) are not thought to be as long-lived as their Great Basin relatives, but they can still unzip a very wide age. A study published in 1992 provided vestige that these trees can live at least 2,500 years. The team looked at trees on Black Mountain and Almagre Mountain in Colorado. They found 12 living Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines that were increasingly than 1,600 years old and four that were increasingly than 2,100 years old. CB-90-11 was the oldest identified, with a minimum age of 2,435.
8. Unnamed Qilian juniper (2,230 years old)
A juniper tree in China was found to be 2,230 years old in 2009. (Image credit: oxygen/Getty Images)
In 2019, researchers identified the oldest tree in China — a Qilian juniper (Juniperus przewalskii) in Delingha, Qinghai province, that was 2,230 years old in 2009. It was one of 98 documented trees that are increasingly than 1,000 years old in China. The oldest trees in China tend to be found in remote mountain regions where they may have been increasingly protected versus threats such as logging and forest fires.
9. Unverified trees
The Fortingall Yew in Scotland is said to be 9,000 years old. (Image credit: Duncan_Andison/Getty Images)
Across the world, there are trees that local oral traditions requirement are thousands of years old. These include Sarv-e Abarkuh, a Persian cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) in Iran said to be increasingly than 4,500 years old, and the Great Camphor of Takeo, a camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora) in Japan that's said to be increasingly than 3,000 years old.
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There is moreover the Llangernyw Yew, a worldwide yew tree (Taxus baccata) in North Wales said to be up to 5,000 years old, and the Fortingall Yew in Scotland, which some traditions place at up to 9,000 years old. The month of these trees and many others like them have not been scientifically verified, so their true month are unknown.
