Kauri trees aren't only old but also enormous. A Giant Kauri tree in Waitakere Ranges Regional Park near Auckland, New Zealand.
In search of the Old Ones: Where to find the world's longest-lived trees
The Fortingall Yew. In a small church yard in Perthshire sits a yew tree which has been growing for thousands of years. Experts haven’t been able to gauge the exact age of this incredible tree but it’s thought to be somewhere between 3,000 and 9,000 years old.
Of some 140,000 species of woody plants on the planet, only about 25-30 can, without human assistance, produce specimens that reach the age of 1,000 years or older. Of those millennials, only about 10 can reach 2,000 years. And of those supermortals – all of them conifers – only three can produce trimillennials. Only one can produce quadrimillennials.
Humans have a long history of venerating elderflora (old trees) and megaflora (big trees). They have an equally long history of burning and felling them
The gnarled, slow-growing Bristlecone pine of the Great Basin are thought to be some of the oldest living trees on the planet
In California, one of these hardy pines has survived for 4,800 years
A Fitzroya Cupressoides tree located in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park (above🔼), is more than 5000 years old.
That would make this tree, known as the Alerce Milenario, the world’s oldest known tree.
In Sierra Nevada. a number of Mariposa Grove's Giant Sequoias have been determined to be over 3,000 years old.
Disappearing giants: Many were alive during the reign of Julius Caesar and bear more leaves than there are people in China. At 300 feet tall, the giant sequoia pictured above (and on our Instagram) towers above neighboring white firs in California's Sequoia National Park. Despite their resilience, climate change is threatening the mammoths—up to 19 percent of sequoias died between 2020 and 2021, Nat Geo reports.
Check out my illustration in this month’s issue of The Wildlife Professional! This was done for an essay by Bob Wilkerson and Rodney Siegel which discusses the absolutely crucial role that giant sequoias play in the lives of wildlife - including providing nest sites for the endangered California Condor.