The World’s Oldest Living Tree

The spruce tree has long been thought to be a relative newcomer in Sweden’s mountain region. So it came as no small surprise to discover that the world’s oldest living tree is a Swedish spruce found in the Dalarna province.

In fact, the ancient spruce is the oldest of a four-generation cluster of spruce found under the crown of a spruce tree in Fulu Mountain. These trees range in age from 375 to 9,550 years old and are genetically identical to the trees above them. Spruce trees can multiply by producing identical copies of themselves.

These ancient trees eclipse the previous record holders. Ancient bristlecone pines found in the southwest United States were dated to 4,000 to 5,000 years of age and were considered to be the world’s oldest living trees until the discovery of the Swedish spruce trees.

Future studies of these trees may shed light on weather conditions over the past 10,000 years, and may even add to our knowledge of climate change in northern Europe. They may also be able to provide information on whether they came from the east, or whether their ancestors lived west or southwest of Norway and spread to the north as the last Ice Age ended.

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The World’s Oldest Preserved Forests (Yes, there are two of them)

The record for the world’s oldest preserved forest turns out to be a tie. Both forests are about 300 million years old, and were found half a world apart.

The first, reported in 2007, was discovered in a coal mine located in Illinois. This one is also the largest ever found and is believed to cover an area of about 6 square miles (10 km). It was found more than 100 feet below the surface during mining operations. The remains are a treasure-trove of examples of extinct species, with club mosses which grew to over 40 feet high along with tree ferns, shrubs, and giant horsetails.

The huge size and diversity of the forest is allowing researchers to gain significant insights into the complex make-up of these ancient forests. For more information on the Illinois forest, click here

The second forest, located near Wuda in northern China, was found beneath a coal mine. It is much smaller in size than the Illinois find, but exhibits a wide diversity of plant life. Researchers studied three different sites totaling about 1,000 square meters and found that each site was a bit different than the others in terms of plant composition.

The Wuda forest was buried by a layer of volcanic ash, which preserved not only trunks and branches, but leaves and even pinecones. The Illinois forest apparently fell victim to an earthquake which which caused the area to drop below sea level. The forest was then buried in mud, which preserved the plants.

The fact that the two forests were found in or near coal mines is not too surprising. Both forests flourished during the Carboniferous period, which is when most of the world’s coal deposits were formed.

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