Trees rooted in the ages survive still

More than a thousand years before the oldest sequoia was a seedling, Alerce Milenario was growing in the mist and humidity, deep in a ravine in the coastal mountains of Chile.

It kept its mossy whereabouts a secret for over 5,000 years until it reached 200 feet into the sky, supported by a 13-foot-diameter trunk. And then, 50 years ago, a park ranger spotted the Patagonian cypress.

Its exact age can probably only be determined by taking a core sample and counting its seasoned rings under a microscope. Park rangers are unwilling to disturb the ancient tree. Most of the tree is already dead, and its living part relies on a fragile root system that human foot traffic could kill it.

Instead of ring cores, tree scientists have used statistical modeling, using cores from other nearby alerces. They think the tree is 5,484 years old.

That would put it well ahead of the oldest sequoias in California, which reach an age of more than 3,600 years.

If correct, the alerce would still be older than the gnarled Methuselah tree of the White Mountains in California. That ancient bristlecone pine germinated 4,800 years ago before the Egyptian pyramids were built. As with all the ancients, its exact location is secret to protect it from modern well-wishers and vandals.

Bristlecone pines are thought to be the oldest living individual organisms and now live on protected federal lands.

Methuselah has contemporaries still living today. There is Sarv-e Abarkuh, an enormous cypress in Iran, and the Llangernyw Yew in Wales, both thought to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old.

If you consider the root systems of trees and not the age of the trunk, none of these ancients comes close to the 100 acres of quaking aspen in Utah, called the Pando. The 47,000 trees in the Pando are stems growing from a single root system, which is certainly tens of thousands of years old.

In Sweden, Old Tjikko, just 16 feet tall, has a root system believed to be 9,500 years old, although the trunk is only a few hundred years old, according to Science magazine.