I got to thinking about some of the things around us like the Pyramids of Geza or the ruins of the Parthenon seem so very ancient...yet there are "things" that are still living that are even older than these! Bruce (my dad) captions under a pic of a very old church in his book "Stewart: Heather Lost" on page 72 that there is an old Yew tree that is reputed to have been planted there by Pontius Pilate and by other stories 3,000 years old! At first this seems quite far-fetched yet let me throw some facts and perhaps maybe a few more stories your way...don't worry I'm not going to redwood/sequoia you. I think this is good stuff:
1) There are Norway Spruce growing in the mountains between Norway and Sweden that have been carbon-dated to be as old as 8,000 years!
2) There is a King's Holly which is a sterile hybrid (triploid- meaning that it has 3 times the normal monoploid chromosomes which invariably makes it a real loner!). This remains growing over a large area in Africa as thickets of plants growing from suckering roots. It is "estimated" that this plant could be as much as 43,000 years old!
3) There is a Creosote bush in the Mojave Desert that by some estimates could be as old as 11,000 years. The best a professor from UC Riverside could do was prove at least 2,000 years by the circular placement of living trunk "fragments" in a large circle and analyzing each fragment's growth rings.
4) There is a Bristle Cone pine nicknamed Methuselah from the White Mts. of California that is 4,700 years old.
5) Last but probably not the least ancient is "The Pando" a Trembling Aspen from Utah. It is a single male plant (some plants have male or female flowers on different plants termed as dioecious) spreading, again by suckering from the roots, over about 100 acres! There are about 47,000 existing trunks from the SAME root system!!! Now here might be a lingering story...75,000 YEARS OLD!!! There are other possibly more realistic estimates that put it at LEAST 10,000 years old! Ya know I don't really much care when it gets over a few thousand years...so add as many as ya want...it is still more ancient than I can imagine!
OK so now this isn't enough to impress you?! Try this for size (so ya think older means BIGGER?):
6) In a dig 2,000 feet below the earth's surface a team of scientists found frozen spores of a bacteria that was dated at 250,000,000 years old. What is so shocking is that the genetic material within the spores was not only intact but the spores were "alive" and produced, living and I assume multiplying bacteria! The article that I got this from also said that this goes against what most scientists had ever predicted about bacteria longevity by a very, very long shot!
So...all of you out there who read this: Is it a lot of malarkey? Or, maybe you have some evidence of really old living things! There is a limitation upon responses as they must be about things much older than me...well I guess I am not really that old after all! So they must be REALLY OLD!
I am sorry that I don't have any pics for this episode. I could have taken a pic of Carole and Myself since we are the oldest living things here on Olive St. But how could we even begin to compare to all of the above!
Michael/natureguy
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As an 82 year old from a very, very old, old line of Catholic ancestry I am so humbled by my God, Creator, Who set all this in motion-- simply boggles my mind the magnificence of it all. As you write it is like a beautiful prayer of Thanksgiving, appropriate for this approaching season. And yet not me, nor any of these creations described above escapes the absolutely loving care of my God. Indeed, I am in awe! Thanks for the inspiration! Thanks to all those ancient teachers who passed on awe to me and on to you.
ReplyDeleteThat 250 million-year-old bacteria sounds worrying. How long before we start hearing of the pending dinosaur flu epidemic? ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh...sorry that I didn't mention that they were flesh eating bacteria and the reason that you probably have not heard about it yet is that I think than the team of scientists never made it past the thousand foot depth. I am sure that they sealed off the hole and buried it in several tons of concrete! Then again if there ever was a Jurrassic Park gone amoc it would be nice to know that there was a dinosaur flu readily available!
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying imagining a pie or other recipe I could make with these wonderful fruit you have in your garden. You could even throw together a lovely fruit salad, and that would be perfect.
ReplyDeleteYour garden is so beautiful. I like the way you are preserving the natural flow of plants and flowers by using the slope of the ground and not over pruning. It shows that you trust the plants and allow them their own progression.
Hope all is well with you.
Love,
Steph