This type of spruce produces needles instead of rings. So there are 9,000+ needles on the tree, and they add on a hundred or so years to account for people picking them off in passing.
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TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Silly question but what would it look like if you cut the tree? Would it have so many rings that it’s essentially a solid color? Do trees stop growing rings at a certain point?
lime@feddit.nu 5 weeks ago
i was there this summer! it’s not this particular trunk that’s 9000+ years old, but rather the entire organism. the current largest trunk is like 50 or so years old, but the ground cover is older and the root system is how they figured out the total age.
fun fact, the largest organism ever recorded is also a tree. it’s called (pando)[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)] and has 46000 stems stretching over 40ish hectares. it’s basically a forest of clones.
TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Incredible, thanks for the explanation!