A 2,624-Year-Old Tree Has Just Been Found Growing in a Swamp in America

[jpak]

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-2-624-year-old-tree-has-just-been-found-growing-in-a-swamp-in-america

Along the Black River in North Carolina, bald cypress trees have been quietly growing for millennia. Quite literally so: Scientists recently found trees over 2,000 years old - including one that is at least 2,624 years old.

That makes it the fifth-oldest known non-clonal tree in the world. (Utah's Pando, an ancient quaking aspen forest, reproduces asexually, by cloning itself from an 80,000-year-old root system.)

Another nearby tree was found to be 2,088 years old - and geoscientists believe that more bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum) in the Three Sisters Swamp could be the same age or even older.

"There are surely multiple over 2,000-year-old trees at Black River," geoscientist David Stahle of the University of Aransas told The Charlotte Observer.

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[Glorfindel]

1. They shouldn't publicize it.

The tree will become a target.

[LastDemocratInSC]

2. That's the first thing I thought, too

It will end up being riddled with bullet holes, just like the road signs.

[JDC]

3. Totally agree.

[Princetonian]

4. What method did they use to ascertain age?

I have always wondered...

[Yonnie3]

5. Follow the link in the original post above and you will find ...

"... Using a sampling tool known as an increment borer that does no lasting harm to the trees, the researchers can take a core sample that allows them to count the tree's rings - the ones made by annual growth layers. These samples can be complicated by core rot, resulting in trees that are hollow in the middle, so the team selected trees that are solid all the way through ..."

[Princetonian]

6. "... no lasting harm to the trees."

Thank you, Yonnie.