NOVA Online - Methuselah Tree | A Tree's Secret to Living Long
Methuselah Tree | A Tree's Secret to Living Long
by Peter Tyson
NOVA Online
PBS.org
It's hard enough to accept that a tree that was a seedling before the Egyptian Pyramids went up is still alive today, as is the case with the Methuselah Tree, a bristlecone pine more than 46 centuries old. But it's truly baffling to learn under what conditions it has accomplished this extraordinary feat.
Just ask Robert Mohlenbrock. A decade or so ago, Mohlenbrock, a professor of botany at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, visited the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, part of California's Inyo National Forest. "At the time I thought that any organism that lived longer than the norm had to have optimal conditions going for it," he wrote in Natural History (5/85). For plants, that would mean moderate temperature, shelter from extreme weather, and plenty of moisture and nutrients.
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