Trees
Tree records

Living things older than the pyramids

From a lone bristlecone pine on a California mountaintop to an aspen grove that is really one giant organism, meet the oldest trees on Earth.

Meet the elders

Some trees alive today were already growing when the first pyramids were built. Scientists separate two kinds of ancient tree: individual trees, whose single trunk can be dated by counting rings, and clonal trees, which keep sending up new trunks from the same ancient roots, so the organism is far older than any trunk you can see.

Methuselah

Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), White Mountains, California

  • ~4,850 years old
  • Oldest known non-clonal tree
  • Location kept secret

Methuselah grows in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the Inyo National Forest. Its age was established from a tree-ring core, and Guinness lists it as the oldest living individual tree.[1][2] The Forest Service doesn’t mark which tree it is, to protect it from souvenir hunters, so every gnarled pine along the trail could be the one.

Prometheus

Great Basin bristlecone pine, Wheeler Peak, Nevada

  • 4,862+ rings counted
  • Likely 5,000+ years
  • Cut in 1964

Prometheus (WPN-114) is a lesson that helped protect other trees. In 1964 a graduate student studying Ice Age glaciers, Donald Currey, cut it down with Forest Service permission to count its rings. The count revealed one of the oldest trees ever known. Its loss became a rallying cry for protecting these ancient groves; the area is now part of Great Basin National Park (established 1986), where bristlecones are protected.[3]

Old Tjikko

Norway spruce (Picea abies), Fulufjället, Sweden

  • Root system ~9,550 years
  • Trunk only a few hundred years
  • Found in 2004

Geographer Leif Kullman found this small, windswept spruce in 2004 and named it after his late dog. Its visible trunk is young, but carbon dating of genetically identical wood beneath it shows the same root system has been regrowing stems for about 9,550 years, starting soon after the ice sheets melted.[4]

Pando

Quaking aspen clone (Populus tremuloides), Fishlake National Forest, Utah

  • ~47,000 stems
  • ~106 acres
  • Thousands of years old

Pando (Latin for “I spread”) looks like a whole grove, but every trunk is a genetically identical stem from one shared root system. It is one of the heaviest living things on Earth. A 2024 genetic study estimated its age at roughly 16,000 to 80,000 years; the true number is still uncertain.[5][6] Fencing and careful management are now helping young stems grow back.

Gran Abuelo (“Great-Grandfather”)

Patagonian cypress / alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides), Alerce Costero National Park, Chile

  • Estimated ~5,484 years
  • Not yet confirmed
  • Trunk ~4 m wide

In 2022 Chilean scientist Jonathan Barichivich estimated this alerce could be about 5,484 years old, which would make it older than Methuselah. Because a complete core couldn’t reach the center, the age comes from a partial core plus a statistical model, and other scientists are waiting for more evidence.[7][8]

Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi

Sacred fig (Ficus religiosa), Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka

  • Planted 288 BC
  • ~2,300 years old
  • Oldest known human-planted tree

Grown from a cutting of the tree under which the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, this fig has been tended by people for more than two millennia. It is the oldest living tree with a known planting date.[9]

How do we know how old a tree is?

  • Tree rings (dendrochronology). Most trees in seasonal climates add one ring each year. Scientists take a pencil-thin core with an increment borer (the tree isn’t harmed) and count and match the rings.
  • Cross-dating. Wet and dry years make wide and narrow rings. Matching these patterns between living trees and old dead wood builds timelines thousands of years long.
  • Radiocarbon dating. For clones like Old Tjikko, scientists date ancient wood buried under the tree and check its DNA matches the living plant.
  • Genetics. For Pando, researchers counted tiny mutations that build up over time, like a slow molecular clock.

Secrets of a long life

Bristlecone pines live where little else can: cold, dry, windy slopes with thin soil. They grow incredibly slowly, making dense, resinous wood that resists rot and insects. Parts of a bristlecone can die back while a single strip of living bark keeps the rest of the tree alive. Fewer neighbors also means fewer wildfires sweeping through.

Visiting old trees? Stay on trails, never take bark, cones or wood, and respect closures. Many of the oldest trees survive today because their exact locations are kept quiet.

Sources

  1. Guinness World Records: Oldest living individual tree (Methuselah). https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-living-individual-tree
  2. U.S. Forest Service, Inyo National Forest: Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. https://www.fs.usda.gov/r05/inyo/recreation/ancient-bristlecone-pine-forest
  3. National Park Service, Great Basin NP: The Prometheus Story. https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/historyculture/the-prometheus-story.htm
  4. Umeå University: World’s oldest living tree discovered in Sweden (2008). https://www.umu.se/en/news/worlds-oldest-living-tree-discovered-in-sweden_5838747
  5. Pineau et al. (2024), mutation-based age estimate for the Pando aspen clone (PMC). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11526904/
  6. U.S. Forest Service, Fishlake National Forest: Pando. https://www.fs.usda.gov/r04/fishlake/recreation/explore-forest/pando
  7. The Guardian (2022): Gran Abuelo: Chile’s alerce may be the world’s oldest tree. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/gran-abuelo-chile-world-oldest-living-tree-alerce
  8. Universidad Austral de Chile (2022): study estimates the Alerce Milenario at 5,484 years (Spanish). https://www.forestal.uach.cl/noticias/post.php?s=2022-05-24-estudio-permitio-estimar-en-5-484-anos-la-edad-del-alerce-milenario-de-la-union
  9. Guinness World Records: Oldest known human-planted tree (Sri Maha Bodhi). https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-known-human-planted-tree