Is 9,550 Year Old World’s Oldest Living Tree ‘Discovery’ Disputable?
Sweden’s Umeå University in April announced the discovery of ‘the world’s oldest living tree’, a 9,550 year old spruce in the mountains of Dalarna province of the Nordic country.
Scientists discovered the 13 foot tall (4 meter tall) spruce growing at an altitude of 2,985 feet (910 meters) on Fulu Mountain but it is thought its roots actually sprouted just after the end of the last ice age, nearly 10,000 years ago, and the lone survivor has been cloning itself ever since.
The discovery effectively turned the tables on Methuselah, a bristlecone pine located in California’s White Mountains, which at 4,768 years old, was believed to be the oldest living tree around. Its species are known to live long - there are 4,000-year-old pine trees in North America.
But the Western Institute for Study of the Environment (WISE) immediately questioned whether the “Christmas tree” can actually be claimed to be the oldest living tree because it defines its regeneration process as ‘layering’ as opposed to ‘cloning’, which Leif Kullman, the Umeå University ecologist who made the discovery, used to describe its ability to push out another trunk as another one died.
This process, Kullman said, enabled a cloned stem to emerge from the root system in spite of the fact that the lifespan of a typical spruce is about 600 years.
WISE, however, describes cloning, as when the original root system puts out new stems without layering, and cites the tanoak and quaking aspen as examples. Layering, on the other hand, is when a branch contacts soil and new roots emerge at the contact point. Then a new stem may grow from the new root system. Examples: coast redwoods and western red cedars.
WISE said: “In the case of the ancient Norway spruce, it appears that the original root system was still intact and living, but the current stems had arisen by layering”.
Pando, a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen in the Utah, which reproduces by cloning, has been cited by some scientists to be over 1 million years old.
Does this, then, dispute the lonely Fulu Mountain spruce as the oldest living tree?
Image credit: Leif Kullman
