Pine trees take center stage this time of year — a cultural practice that might amuse Nevada’s bristlecone pines, which were already old when the reported events in Bethlehem went down a couple millennia ago. They’ve seen it all come and go: With some specimens exceeding 5,000 years, “most scientists consider the bristlecone pine to be the oldest living organism on Earth,” says Travel Nevada. (A few other scientists tout certain microorganisms, but pfft to that.) It’s an unimaginable sweep of time.
Some more fun facts about Nevada’s ancient, famously gnarled state tree:
🌲 The bristlecone is actually the state’s second official tree, adopted in 1987. The first, designated in 1953, was the single-leaf piñon.
🌲 The tree’s comfort zone is 5,600-11,200 feet high.
🌲 Bristlecones get so gnarled with age it’s easy to assume they’re dead. (And when they do die, they don’t rot, they slowly erode.) Says Travel Nevada: “Keep an eye out for tiny sprigs of bottle brush-looking plumes. Even if there’s just one tiny cluster at the very top, that thing is very much alive.”
🌲 In 1964, a scientist studying climate data stored in bristlecone rings, had to cut one down. How many rings did it have? Just 4,862. The dead tree was dubbed Prometheus, and a slab of it is on display in the visitors center at Great Basin National Park.
🌲 These trees grow very slowly; a cluster of needles can hang onto its branch for decades. This incremental growth makes the wood denser and less attractive to bugs and fungi.
🌲 It’s not yet clear how this slow growth will square with the speed of climate change.
Wanna See One?
My knees are a close second, but the oldest living thing in this area is a bristlecone pine dubbed Raintree in the Spring Mountains. It’s said to be 3,000 years old. And you can hike right up to it, unless you’re using my knees.
Raintree figures prominently in the poem “Bristlecone in Blue,” which local poet Jennifer Battisti wrote in the wake of the Oct. 1 shootings:
“... when we reach Raintree,
the oldest living thing in Nevada,
we are finally far enough away to be seduced
by hope.”
