The 5000 year old tree.

Whilst looking for pictures to illustrate a thread about the Picts, I came across this, which may interest some of you.
The Fortingall Yew is estimated to be around 5000 years old, and is thought to be the oldest living thing in Europe. Time lines marked in the paving nearby have helped to date the tree. It grows in a kirkyard at Fortingall, near Perth in the geographical heart of Scotland.



To help put the Yew’s life into perspective, it would have already been around 3000 years old when Jesus was born. Local tradition has it that Pontius Pilate played under it as a boy. He was said to have been born here when his father was sent by the emperor Augustus as an emissary to visit the Caledonii.

It has been recorded as having a girth of over 56 feet when it was measured in 1769. Sadly, the tradition of making quaichs from its wood has led to its partial destruction, and it is now a much slimmer version of its former self. The white pegs in the picture above show where the original trunk stood.



(A Quaich, used for drinking.)

Cuttings have been taken to ensure that this beautiful living legend will survive many more years in its Scottish home.


More info

More info

reply to post by beansidhe


The Yew is actually a shrub not a tree unless this species is different from what I know of the Yew. I am glad to hear that they are doing starts from it to continue its legacy as one of the most interesting and long lived genus.

reply to post by beansidhe


Nice. Does anyone have any older pics of the tree when it was larger? Thanks.

EDIT: "Yes, I do!" says a voice in back of the room. "This is what it looked like in 1822"

reply to post by antar


Hi Antar

It's latin name is taxus baccata, which is the common yew found here in Scotland and England. It's a tree and can grow up to around 30ft (10m) high.
There's loads of types, I think, and quite often yews are used for hedging as they grow slowly and fill out in a nice, shrubby way.

It's great it's being conserved like this, I agree. It really is a treasure.

reply to post by beansidhe


G,day mate. as with most things concerning Scotland i become very interested. thankyou.
My paternal great grandmother came from Scotland, i remember meeting her and found it almost impossible to understand her. I have to admit that the memories are amongst my first, so all very fuzzy.
Question. kirkland. what does it mean.
i gather it has something to do with church and yard. or will you hit me for a 6.

reply to post by Aleister


Hi Aleister

Here's another enormous yew, this time at Ankerwyke, which gives a good impression of how it could have looked.



Here's the link to the site the picture came from too, with some great information about the myths that surround these special trees.

Ancient yews


Edit: My gosh, you're fast!

reply to post by pronto


10 points, pronto, it means church yard! See, you know more than you think you do!

reply to post by beansidhe


G,day again. tks for the reply mate. one is never to old to learn.
take care.

I was looking at the rings of some of the trees that were growing up on this clay covered rock where I live. One birch tree was very old, the rings seemed to be very big yet they had other rings within them. At first I thought the big old birch was only a hundred twenty five years old, the rings I counted on a two foot diameter branch seemed to tell me this...at first glance. I suppose the weather has a lot to do with this along with varying nutrition in the soils. I sanded the top of a block and oiled it and I found many rings within a couple of rings. Other rings were big and single, maybe a deer died around the tree those years and the tree got to feed. The center was all messed up, no rings. I examined a two inch maple tree and found about fourty rings in the sixty foot high tree. I looked at the six inch to eight inch trees around this hill and wondered. I had to cut a dead one down, the wood was like glass, and heavy as hell. The rings were so fine I couldn't even count them. Strange that it weighed twice as much as a piece of my fire wood of the same dryness. This tree was very very old.

I have a little cherry tree on the property, I started pruning it. It has about a two inch diameter trunk. I saw lots of rings in the branch I pruned off. It was about sixty years old as far as I could tell with a very powerful lens. I started to fertilize this tree a little and it is now growing and looking better.

I planted apple, plum, and pear trees here, the clay cobbled up the graftings and the trees all died but one. the one grew well while I fertilized it, but it's grafted branches that make it produce the other polination branches died. It is a Stanley plum. It hasn't grown a bit in five years but it is still alive.

You can't judge a book by it's cover. You can't judge the age of a tree by it's size. You need to look with an open mind and a good lens when counting the rings on a tree sometimes. The amount it grows in a year depends on the nutrients in the soil and the kind of weather during the year. It may not grow much at all in a year. A person who has studied trees for a long time knows this. Another thing to consider, does the age of the tree mean the roots are the same age? I have trees where the slow growing center tree died out but the side shoots from the roots made three or four trees out of one. I also have an oak tree growing out of a root of an old oak tree that was cut down long ago. I have a small shoot of birch growing out of the root of the old birch tree that died, the root is not dead yet. How old is the tree you look at. Is the tree only the wood you see above ground or is it about the roots.

I have learned a lot from some articles from the forestry service in Wyoming. Some of those guys are very much into trees, we should listen to them.

reply to post by rickymouse


Trunk - I think. I've taken sycamores down, and if they haven't just sprung right back up. I have a huge yew in my garden that the previous owners took down () but it's slowly coming back to life. In 200 hundred years, anyone counting the rings would have misjudged its age by centuries.

There is a tree in Sweden that is judged by it's root system (almost 10 000 years old), but I guess the 'original' trunk has gone, and so it can't qualify for oldest tree status.

Bit of extra info about other old trees here :

Until 2013, the oldest individual tree in the world was Methuselah, a 4,845-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California.

But then researchers announced the dating of a 5,062-year-old P. longaeva, which is also in the White Mountains, according to the Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research group. The tree has not yet been named.

The next oldest tree on the list is a national monument in Iran: The Zoroastrian Sarv (Sarv-e-Abarkooh), estimated to be about 4,000 years old, or older. This Mediterranean cypress tree (Cupressus sempervirens), which is in Abarkuh, Yazd, Iran, may well be the oldest living thing in Asia.

Living in a churchyard of the Llangernyw village in North Wales, the Llangernyw Yew is also estimated to be at least 4,000 yeas old. The yew tree (Taxus baccata) is believed to have taken root sometime during Britain's Bronze Age.

And on the other side of the world, in an Andes Mountains grove in Chile, we have a 3,642-year-old Patagonian cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides). The ancient specimen, which is sometimes called the Alerce (alerce is a common Spanish name for F. cupressoides), is the third-oldest tree to have its exact age calculated.

Though these are the oldest individual trees in the world, they are technically not the oldest living organisms. There are several clonal colonies — which are made up of genetically identical trees connected by a single root system — that are much older.

For example, the Pando, or "trembling giant," is a clonal colony of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) estimated to be an astounding 80,000 years old. It is located in Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah.

More info here :

www.livescience.com...

If you need more info, please don't hesitate to send me a yew to yew

Kindest resppects

Rodinus

reply to post by Rodinus


The poplar and Tamarack trees are capable of using Rhizomes to grow. Technically they can be cloned trees, capable of being ancient. What about ferns, they are also rhizomes or extensions as are many plants in the world. A seed creates a new being, not an extension of the same organism. Even mushrooms can be very very old beings.

When looking at age, it is important to also look at all evidence, not only that which is initially evident. We have the power to rejuvinate, cells splitting and old ones dying off. We are the same being but most of our cells have been replaced many times over when we die of old age. Our definition of life includes this knowledge but most people do not realize what to look for, they think they know what is going on by what they think they see.

reply to post by pronto


One for you Pronto. Pub in a Boab tree. Believed to be 6,000 years old. Pity its in Africa and not Aus else I'd meet yer there.





Regards,

Bally

reply to post by bally001


G,day mate. good one. wonder if they have a fridge or stock a supply of fire extinguishers to quick chill the beer.
You do realise that as you found the watering hole its your first shout. senior service and all that stuff
take care bloke

reply to post by beansidhe


G,day mate. ques. Do you have anymore interesting info about the place the romans feared.
have any out of place artifacts been found in Scotland.
do you think the vote will come down as a yes for leaving the union.
you might as well the poms have stuffed up disbanded and combined all the Scottish regt's into a hotch potch of, er er i am lost for words.

Truly amazing that their can be life greater than bacteria's and such that survive so long side by side us.

pronto
reply to post by bally001

 

G,day mate. good one. wonder if they have a fridge or stock a supply of fire extinguishers to quick chill the beer.
You do realise that as you found the watering hole its your first shout. senior service and all that stuff
take care bloke

edit on 2-1-2014 by pronto because: bugga left a word out again

I'll bring me Engel and 12 volt. No ice needed. Tree provides the cool conditioning.

Bally

pronto
reply to post by beansidhe

 

G,day mate. ques. Do you have anymore interesting info about the place the romans feared.
have any out of place artifacts been found in Scotland.
do you think the vote will come down as a yes for leaving the union.
you might as well the poms have stuffed up disbanded and combined all the Scottish regt's into a hotch potch of, er er i am lost for words.

1) Yes, more threads on the way!
2) Yes, and out of place Scots found too: Tartan mummies
3) Hope so x

Best wishes

We have one here in Tasmania that's estimated to be over 10000 years old. Maybe it doesn't quite fit the depiction or idea of a single ancient tree with a single trunk because it's been sprouting new trunks from its root system for millenia and taken over a large area of land. It was originally thought to be many individual trees until a study revealed it to be a single connected organism.

Mount Read Huon Pine

The Huon Pine population here was decimated for boat-building when they had no recognition of just how slow growing these trees are. Result is that they are now protected and artifacts made from this dense oily timber and very expensive.

reply to post by Pilgrum


From your link: "Discovered in 1995 by forestry worker Mike Peterson, the ancient Huon Pine has marched its way over more than a hectare, down a hill towards the Lake Johnston glacial lake, reproducing genetically identical male copies - clones - of itself. While the oldest individual tree or stem on the site now may be 1000 to 2000 years old, the organism itself has been living there continuously for 10,500 years."

That is really incredible, I'm amazed by that. Thanks Pilgrum x