Tree of the Month: Old Tjikko

c: Karl Brodowsky

From the BBC:

Scientists had believed the world’s oldest trees were 4,000-year-old pine trees found in North America. The oldest, a bristlecone pine named Methuselah located in California’s White Mountains, is aged 4,768, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The new record contender, which would have taken root just after the last ice age, was found among a cluster of around 20 spruces believed to be more than 8,000 years old at an altitude of 910m (2,985ft) on Fulu Mountain.

The visible portion of the spruce was comparatively new, but analysis of four “generations” of remains – cones and wood – found underneath its crown showed its root system had been growing for 9,550 years, Umeaa University said.