‘World’s oldest tree’ discovered in Sweden

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:42:16 GMT

clipped by: boozich

Swedish researchers have uncovered a stand of spruce trees with an 8,000-year-old tree root system in Dalarna, making it among the oldest in the world.

Carbon-14 dating tests carried out by a lab in the United States on three spruce tree root samples revealed that the trees’ roots were 5,000, 6,000, and 8,000 years old

while any individual tree growing in the area would itself not be more than a few hundred years old, any tree found on site over the centuries would be generated from the same genetic root system.

“There is constant turnover in what is actually growing above ground,”

Prior to the finding, researchers had estimated that spruce trees had only been growing in Sweden for about 3,000 years

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest living individual tree is a bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains estimated to be 4,733-years-old

Clipmarks | boozich's old tree collection

‘World’s oldest tree’ discovered in Sweden