The World's Oldest Plant -Alive at the Last Ice Age

Alive today, the 13-thousand year old Jurupa Oak lived through an Ice Age and existed before agriculture.

Scientists found  the oak in an unlikely habitat: dry and hot rocky hills and found that it survives against the odds like an insane sci-fi villain: by cloning itself to continue life after being burned to death.  The Jurupa Oak colony extends over twenty-five meters, expanding at a pace of two millimeters per year. Genetic analysis shows that the colony is really one organism.

The aged oaks acorns are sterile - it sacrificed the ability to reproduce for extended life (providing the psychotic drive all immortal villains need.)  Instead it survives California wildfires by resprouting around burned buds.  In fact, this Phoenix-like cloning is the only way it can expand, multiply reborn in fire, expanding ever-so-slowly outwards each time it happens.

It's an incredible example of adaptation: this lifeform was already middle-aged by the Bronze Age, and has been happily soaking up the sun as entire civilizations rise and fall.  We'll have to wait and see which of us wins this round.

Luke McKinney via DailyMail.com

World's Oldest Plant 

Comments

[Rr]

The picture doesn't match the story. This is about a colony of bushes, not a towering tree.

[Simon Salosny]

Marvelous! Would like to know if the Jurupa is unique.

[JT]

I would love to have clones of this plant.

[peter]

Not even close. I know this isn't the perfect source, but close enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

[Yong Yeets]

Wow, this makes a lot of sense dude, Good stuff.

www.real-privacy.edu.tc

[Frank Ormando]

I want to cut it down

[william the artist]

definitely go to the wikipedia link! this is not only not the oldest tree, but is not the oldest clonal tree. the whole subject is remarkable none-the-less.

[Camelfoe]

I want to make it into a coffee table.

[Carslinger]

How is it possible for some people to be so base and tasteless, that they can take a story like this and make it into a contentious debate over whether trees should be cut down? This is a story about the adaptation of plants for survival. It should not be an opportunity for some Rush Limbaugh coached moron to state that he wishes to destroy something just because it has the gall to outlive him. Shut your traps, you pinheads. Is that clear enough for your limited intelligence to understand?

[Andrew]

wow thats incredible...I'll take some of those genes.

[Eric]

Thirteen thousand years of awesome!

[Eric]

Interesting topic but that article was painful to read.

[Keven]

Kevin....we agree! It somehow escaped the copy-editing cycle. It's been corrected. Case kazan, editor.

That might be some of the worst writing I've read in awhile.

[Mark]

I always thought the bristlecone pines in California's White mountains were the "oldest living things." They have been sold thusly since Jesus was a Cub Scout.

[casey kazan]

All..This post somehow escaped the copy-editing cycle. It's been corrected. Our apologies. Casey kazan, editor.

[Fox]

Carslinger, you are an R-tard. Now I want to cut it down just to spite your partisan a**.

[Shawn]

Wow! Yes I would love to widdle figures out of it.

[Sydney Coale Light]

Loved this article until I got to the part where you called the magnificent tree a "psychotic villain" because it didn't reproduce in the traditional fashion and lived so long....I'm sorry but it is YOU who are psychotic. Humans reproduce like idiot drones, polluting and destroying their habitat and thinking that they have some divine right to do so. THAT is real psychosis. Keep reproducing until all the lemmings have to jump off the cliff. A beautiful, ancient tree that has kept itself alive through all kinds of changes should be worshiped as a direct link to God. Wake up, what you wrote was neither funny nor enlightening on any level.

[Nobodyatall]

If you stick a branch where the sun wont shine, will he live forever??

[Nobodyatall]

If you stick a branch where the sun wont shine, will he live forever??

[MalikTous]

James White's 'Sector General' sci fi hospital series included a tale of a world where the land masses were covered with growing live things resembling carpets, which fed both by drawing things in from the ocean, growing symbiotic plants on their backs to convert sunlight, and by dissolving minerals for absorption from the soil. This oak 'colony' sounds quite a bit like that world's land denizens... Now what about those huge fungus colonies? How about bristlecone pines, some of those primitive ocean bottom things, and other extremely long lived life forms?

[Red Bull Hats]

Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful!

[Bathroom Living]

It should not be an opportunity for some Rush Limbaugh coached moron to state that he wishes to destroy something just because it has the gall to outlive him.

[Local Position]

A beautiful, ancient tree that has kept itself alive through all kinds of changes should be worshiped as a direct link to God.

[Business Directory Melbourne]

This is a story about the adaptation of plants for survival. It should not be an opportunity for some Rush Limbaugh coached moron to state that he wishes to destroy something just because it has the gall to outlive him.