Old news

A piece from the Microsoft News channel about a very old tree caught my eye this morning while opening up a new tab in Edge.

Being an armchair tree hugger, I dug a little deeper to find that this news was probably the news that surfaced last year, in the Guardian (where I missed it), among other places. An alerce tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) in southern Chile. It looks a long way south, but it actually around 1,000 miles north of Cape Horn. Chile must be a very long country. The tree had been known to be old for a while, but estimates of its age have now moved over 5,000 years, putting it in contention for the world's oldest tree.

[possibly the tree in question, snap lifted from reference 4]

But I learn from reference 1 and elsewhere, that the business of finding the oldest tree is complicated. Do you have to count all the rings and can you do this without chopping the tree down? What about if the middle of the tree has rotted away and the older rings are missing? Do we admit statistically flavoured modelling, based on incomplete evidence?

When does a dying tree count as dead? With there being lots of dead material in the present tree.

What about ancient root system, themselves very old but pushing up much shorter lived trees?

But at least a Welsh yew tree makes it to the top five recorded at reference 1, with yew trees having been the subject of an earlier quest back in 2019. See, for example, reference 5. Regarding which I might say that the curious bottle featured at the end of that post still graces one of my study windows. I can see it as I type this.

Not forgetting in among all these ancient trees that a lot of what Microsoft calls news is pretty ancient too.

PS: after breakfast: not to be outdone, BH has just told me about a very old tree in Scotland which she heard about recently and which may well be in contention at the top of the premier league of trees. The Fortingall Yew, to be found in Perthshire. The Wikipedia entry at reference 6 also notices the Swedish root system which may be near twice as old and which had already made the No.1 spot at reference 1. My own feeling is that root systems should not count.

References

Reference 1: https://wowtravel.me/5-oldest-trees-in-the-world/.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alerce_Milenario. The tree in question.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alerce_Costero_National_Park. Its home in Chile.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzroya. The botany of it all.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/albury-two.html.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortingall_Yew.