The oldest living tree in the world is 4,847 years old, is called Methuselah, in a nod to the biblical character who lived to be 969 years old, and is located in the Inyo National Forest, in central California, United States.
Methuselah: the world’s oldest living tree is 4,847 years old
This was established by the Tree Ring Research Laboratory of the University of Arizona, United States, one of the world authorities on the subject.
It is a specimen of Pinus longaeva, the species discovered in the 1930s by Edmund Schulman, a paleontologist who was dedicated to dating droughts and cosmic events through tree rings.
These pines grow at more than 3,000 meters above sea level, in an arid land scourged by icy winds.
And it is this adverse environment that makes them so long-lived.
Thanks to the unseasonable winds, their trunks grow stronger and form a thick layer of resin that protects them from rotting and parasites or fungi.
So, according to the experts, Methuselah is a twisted pine, entangled in itself, a tree that seems more dead than alive, a sort of natural sculpture.
However, no matter how many details have come to light about Methuselah’s appearance, unless you are one of the scientists investigating it, you will not be able to know it.
The U.S. Forest Service refuses to reveal its exact coordinates to avoid vandalism.
Not even a photograph of Methuselah has been released, so the image at the top of this article is not of the tree in question, but of another thousand-year-old specimen in the Inyo National Forest.
“Distinguishing it (among the other ancient trees) with the naked eye is impossible,” Matthew Salzer, a research associate at the University of Arizona Laboratory, confirmed to The New York Times.
A history of vandalism
The zeal could be considered excessive if it did not have an antecedent.
The tree that previously topped the list of the longest-lived trees succumbed to the axe of a geography student.
Scientists called it Prometheus, because it grew chained to the mountain like the titan of Greek mythology, although not in the Caucasus, but in the Great Basins National Park in Nevada (USA).
It was a Bronze Age relic, considered not only the oldest tree, but the oldest non-cloned organism ever known.
Scientists estimated it to be 4,900 years old.
But it stopped being 4,900 years old on August 6, 1964, when Donald R. Currey, a student at the University of North Carolina, decided it was the ideal specimen to illustrate the research he was conducting.
Currey intended to analyze the dynamics of snowmelt during the Little Ice Age, a cold period that spanned from the early 14th century to the mid-19th century, using the techniques of dendrochronology, the science that deals with the dating of tree growth rings.
What is not clear is whether Currey, instead of taking a sample from the tree, asked Forest Service personnel to cut at the root, or it was their initiative.
Whatever the case, the remains of Prometheus are today stored in three cardboard boxes at the Tree Ring Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona, USA.
So, to prevent Methuselah from suffering the same fate or his tough bark from ending up tattooed with the names of dozens of visitors who come to the park to pose next to the world’s oldest tree and share the photo on social networks, an extreme decision was made.
“Plus, if you focus so much on finding that one tree, you literally miss out on the beauty of the forest,” Debra Schweizer, spokesperson for the Inyo National Forest, explained to the media.
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