Old Tjikko Is The World’s Oldest Tree

Question: What is the world’s oldest tree on Earth?

Answer: The world’s oldest tree is called Old Tjikko. It is a 9,550 year old Norway Spruce tree, located on Fulufjället Mountain of Dalarna province in Sweden. Old Tjikko is the world’s oldest living individual clonal tree. Howeverr, there are many examples of much older clonal colonies (multiple trees connected by a common root system), such as “Pando”, estimated to be over 80,000 years old.

Old Tjikko was discovered by geologist Leif Kullman, who named it after his dead dog.

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Utah’s Pando: One Of The World’s Oldest Most Massive Living Organisms

The age of the tree was determined by carbon dating of the root system under the tree, not by dendrochronology, or counting tree rings. The trunk itself is estimated to be only a few hundred years old, but the tree as a whole may have survived for much longer due to a process known as layering (when a branch comes in contact with the ground, it sprouts a new root), or vegetative cloning (when the trunk dies but the root system is still alive, it may sprout a new trunk).

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Image credit: Karl Brodowsky