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While other species of trees that grow nearby suffer rot, bare bristlecone pines can endure, even after death, often still standing on their roots, for many centuries. Exposed wood on living and dead trees does not rot, but rather erodes like stone due to wind, rain, and freezing, which creates unusual forms and shapes.
Pinus aristata is a medium-size tree, commonly reaching 15 meters (49 ft) in height and occasionally as much as 20 m (66 ft) in their natural habitat.In favorable conditions they are straight and upright trees, but they become increasingly stunted, short, and twisted the closer they grow to timberline. [4]
The current record-holders for individual, non-clonal trees are the Great Basin bristlecone pine trees from California and Nevada, in the United States. Through tree-ring cross-referencing, they have been shown to be almost five millennia old. [2] A clonal colony can survive for much longer than an individual tree.
A dendrochronology, based on these trees and other bristlecone pine samples, extends back to about 9000 BC, albeit with a single gap of about 500 years. [20] [3] An older bristlecone pine was reportedly discovered by Tom Harlan in 2009, based on a sample core collected in 1957. According to Harlan, the tree was 5,062 years old and still living ...
Methuselah is a Great Basin bristlecone pine that is 4,856 years old and has been credited as the oldest known living non-clonal organism on Earth. [6] To protect it, the exact location of this tree is kept secret. In 1987, the bristlecone pine was designated one of Nevada's state trees. [7]
Researchers in Chile identify a challenger to the world's oldest tree: an alerce in Alerce Costero National Park that may be over 5,000 years old.
Once the pine cones are collected, they're brought to a network of nurseries, where the seeds are extracted and grown into seedlings. One million seedlings will plant about 4,500 acres of new forest.
The Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) trees grow between 9,800 and 11,000 feet (3,000–3,400 m) above sea level, in xeric alpine conditions, protected within the Inyo National Forest. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Limber pine (Pinus flexilis) also grow in the forest.