How One Man Accidentally Killed the Oldest Tree Ever
In 1964, Donal Rusk Currey killed the oldest tree ever. To this day, there has still never been an older tree discovered. The tree was a Great Basin bristlecone pine, and Currey didn’t meant to kill it. It was an accident, and one he didn’t really understand the ramifications of until he started counting rings
Basically, Currey got his tree corer stuck in the tree. So stuck that it wouldn’t come out. An unwitting park ranger helped him by cutting the tree down, to remove the instrument, and later Currey began to count the rings. Eventually, he realized that the tree he had just felled was almost 5,000 years old – the oldest tree ever recorded. The story is a sad one, but there’s a lot of science in there too. Great bristlecone pines are some of the longest living trees in the world. In the 1950s, this was a shock to people, who always thought that for trees, longevity correlated with size. Bristlecone pines max out at around 20 feet tall—they’re gnarly, little gnomes of trees, nothing like the majestic Redwoods of California. Collectors Weekly explains how they live so long:
It’s also worth noting that figuring out how old a tree is, isn’t that easy. Dendrochronology—the fancy word for tree-ring dating—didn’t come around until the 1890s. And it’s more complicated than just counting rings, since each ring doesn’t necessarily correspond to a year. The University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research explains:Ring-counting does not ensure the accurate dating of each individual ring.Numerous studies illustrate how ring-counting leads to incorrect conclusions
The tree Currey felled has been nicknamed the Prometheus tree. Collectors Weekly writes:
Now, Currey almost certainly didn’t fell the oldest tree ever. There are forests in the White Mountains, and elsewhere, where trees currently standing are probably far older than his Prometheus tree. We just don’t know about them. |