In 2016 Europe's oldest tree was found to be a Bosnian Pine .....
.... Growing in the highlands of Northern Greece.
The tree was believed to be planted in AD 941 during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos and was nicknamed 'Adonis', after the Greek god of beauty and is 1079 years old. Of course this is nowhere near the oldest tree in the world. The oldest individual tree, a bristle-cone pine in California, named Methuselah, was dated in 1957 as being 4,600 years old, although some scientists claim to have found at least one even older.
Technically there are trees which are even older if you allow for 'cloned trees.' There is a spruce tree in the Fulu Mountains, in Dalarna province in Sweden, which would have taken root just after the last ice age, and was found among a cluster of around 20 spruces all believed to be more than 8,000 years old.
The reason why its considered to be a clone tree is that although the current visible tree is comparatively young, the root system from which it has sprung, has been growing for 9,550 years. The spruce's stems or trunks have a lifespan of only around 600 years, but as soon as one died, a cloned stem could emerge from the root system which had never died.
Now Adonis looked to be secure in his new position as numero uno in Europe, but then in 2018 a Heldreich’s pine tree, growing on a steep rocky slope high in the mountains of Pollino National Park in Southern Italy, was found to be 1,232 years old.
The researchers nicknamed it Italus, and it will have seeded in about AD 789.... oddly southern Italy around the toe and heel was also then still a part of the Byzantine Empire .... so thus the tree would have seeded under Emperor Constantine VI.
Probably there are older trees out there in Europe, but finding them is hard, so Italus may hold the crown for a few years yet.
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| Bosnian Pine Adonis Could Have Seen Byzantine Emperror Romanos I Lekapenos ....... |
.... Growing in the highlands of Northern Greece.
The tree was believed to be planted in AD 941 during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos and was nicknamed 'Adonis', after the Greek god of beauty and is 1079 years old. Of course this is nowhere near the oldest tree in the world. The oldest individual tree, a bristle-cone pine in California, named Methuselah, was dated in 1957 as being 4,600 years old, although some scientists claim to have found at least one even older.
Technically there are trees which are even older if you allow for 'cloned trees.' There is a spruce tree in the Fulu Mountains, in Dalarna province in Sweden, which would have taken root just after the last ice age, and was found among a cluster of around 20 spruces all believed to be more than 8,000 years old.
The reason why its considered to be a clone tree is that although the current visible tree is comparatively young, the root system from which it has sprung, has been growing for 9,550 years. The spruce's stems or trunks have a lifespan of only around 600 years, but as soon as one died, a cloned stem could emerge from the root system which had never died.
Now Adonis looked to be secure in his new position as numero uno in Europe, but then in 2018 a Heldreich’s pine tree, growing on a steep rocky slope high in the mountains of Pollino National Park in Southern Italy, was found to be 1,232 years old.
 |
| Europe's Oldest Tree Italus Not An Impressive Specimen Of Tree-hood .... |
The researchers nicknamed it Italus, and it will have seeded in about AD 789.... oddly southern Italy around the toe and heel was also then still a part of the Byzantine Empire .... so thus the tree would have seeded under Emperor Constantine VI.
Probably there are older trees out there in Europe, but finding them is hard, so Italus may hold the crown for a few years yet.
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