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The world’s oldest tree, a 9,500-year-old Norwegian Spruce named “Old Tjikko,” after Professor Leif Kullman’s Siberian husky, continues to grow in Sweden. Discovered in 2004 by Kullman, professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University, the age of the tree was determined using carbon-14 dating.
“During the ice age sea level was 120 meters lower than today and much of what is now the North Sea in the waters between England and Norway was at that time forest,” Professor Kullman told Aftonbladet. Winds and low temperatures made Old Tjikko “like a bonsai tree…Big trees cannot get as old as this.”
More info: National Geographic (h/t: mymodernmet, aftonbladet)
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Image credits: Karl Brodowsky
Image credits: Leif Kullman
Image credits: Carkrull
Image credits: Patrik Qvist
Image credits: IBL/Rex Features
Image credits: Petter Rybäck
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AlanMarble 9 years ago
Hate to be a buzzkill but this isn't actually true. Old Tjikko is what you call a clonal organism. Imagine that when you got old, a copy of you budded off your thumb, and when you died and shriveled up that copy could go on living. When that copy aged it would repeat the process over and over. After 9000 years, the currently living clone would not be the original "you", but you could argue that each clone was attached to the last and the overall organism is 9000 years old. That's what has happened with this tree, growing and dying off, and a new copy branching off of the root system. This process has been going on for 9550 years, but the existing tree (trunk, branches, leaves, etc) is no more than a few hundred years old. The oldest individual tree is an unnamed bristlecone pine, aged about 5,065 years. Old Tjikko isn't even the oldest clonal organism - that distinction belongs to a colony of aspen in Utah called Pando, which has been growing for at least 80,000 years.
DariusBerghe 9 years ago
good informative stuff Alan, wiki says that the Pando colony seems to be the largest living organism known having a huge underground interconnected root network
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AndyLittle 9 years ago
A bit misleading. The actual part of the tree you show in the photos is no more than 600 years old. It's a clonal tree, where individual stems grow and die but then a new trunk will sprout from the root system, or from a branch of the older tree that contacts the ground. So the tree shown wouldn't have been there even a thousand years ago.
ThomasNoll 9 years ago
Stars and Stripes 4Ever Yes. you are a different person after all your cells regrow, and the originals die. this happens every 7 years, but not all at once, like this tree.
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Styl G 7 years ago
There is a big difference between anyone of us and his CLONE. I hope everyone understands that?
.
The article above is referring to a tree that repeatedly CLONES itselve (so the tree living now is genetically identical to one living more than 1000 years ago). Tree systems like those have been called MISLEADING & WRONG the oldest trees in the world, because the individual trees live only a few hundred years before asexually spawning a REPLANCEMENT CLONE
.
As for TREE CLONES, e.g. the Pando is a clonal tree colony in Utah USA and is estimated to be 80,000 years
.
The OLDEST known LIVING TREE in EUROPE was discovered in the highlands of Greece in 2016 and named ADONIS after the Greek God of beauty. This Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) is living in the Alpine forests of the Pindos mountains in Greece and is more than 1,075 years old
.
Anyone can see from the Foto of Adonis that he is over 1000 years 09_geo_ael...uropas.jpg 
Adonis1-58...25c26c.jpg 
Stella Petran 7 years ago
Very good points made. Anyone can see that the actual part of the tree shown in the photos above is no more than a few hundreds years old. In the article they did "misleading" not say "the oldest? living individual clonal tree". As for tree clones, there are much older such organisms. For example, the Pando ("trembling giant") is a clonal tree colony made up of more than 40,000 individual quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) trees, located in Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah USA, the colony is estimated to be an astounding 80,000 years old. According to National Geographic a "1,075-Year-Old Pine Named ‘Adonis’ Is Europe’s Oldest-Known Living Tree". This "Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece has been dendrocronologically dated to be more than 1,075 years old, living since the time of the Vikings..."
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AlanMarble 9 years ago
Hate to be a buzzkill but this isn't actually true. Old Tjikko is what you call a clonal organism. Imagine that when you got old, a copy of you budded off your thumb, and when you died and shriveled up that copy could go on living. When that copy aged it would repeat the process over and over. After 9000 years, the currently living clone would not be the original "you", but you could argue that each clone was attached to the last and the overall organism is 9000 years old. That's what has happened with this tree, growing and dying off, and a new copy branching off of the root system. This process has been going on for 9550 years, but the existing tree (trunk, branches, leaves, etc) is no more than a few hundred years old. The oldest individual tree is an unnamed bristlecone pine, aged about 5,065 years. Old Tjikko isn't even the oldest clonal organism - that distinction belongs to a colony of aspen in Utah called Pando, which has been growing for at least 80,000 years.
DariusBerghe 9 years ago
good informative stuff Alan, wiki says that the Pando colony seems to be the largest living organism known having a huge underground interconnected root network
Load More Replies... AndyLittle 9 years ago
A bit misleading. The actual part of the tree you show in the photos is no more than 600 years old. It's a clonal tree, where individual stems grow and die but then a new trunk will sprout from the root system, or from a branch of the older tree that contacts the ground. So the tree shown wouldn't have been there even a thousand years ago.
ThomasNoll 9 years ago
Stars and Stripes 4Ever Yes. you are a different person after all your cells regrow, and the originals die. this happens every 7 years, but not all at once, like this tree.
Load More Replies... Styl G 7 years ago
There is a big difference between anyone of us and his CLONE. I hope everyone understands that?
.
The article above is referring to a tree that repeatedly CLONES itselve (so the tree living now is genetically identical to one living more than 1000 years ago). Tree systems like those have been called MISLEADING & WRONG the oldest trees in the world, because the individual trees live only a few hundred years before asexually spawning a REPLANCEMENT CLONE
.
As for TREE CLONES, e.g. the Pando is a clonal tree colony in Utah USA and is estimated to be 80,000 years
.
The OLDEST known LIVING TREE in EUROPE was discovered in the highlands of Greece in 2016 and named ADONIS after the Greek God of beauty. This Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) is living in the Alpine forests of the Pindos mountains in Greece and is more than 1,075 years old
.
Anyone can see from the Foto of Adonis that he is over 1000 years 09_geo_ael...uropas.jpg Adonis1-58...25c26c.jpg
Stella Petran 7 years ago
Very good points made. Anyone can see that the actual part of the tree shown in the photos above is no more than a few hundreds years old. In the article they did "misleading" not say "the oldest? living individual clonal tree". As for tree clones, there are much older such organisms. For example, the Pando ("trembling giant") is a clonal tree colony made up of more than 40,000 individual quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) trees, located in Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah USA, the colony is estimated to be an astounding 80,000 years old. According to National Geographic a "1,075-Year-Old Pine Named ‘Adonis’ Is Europe’s Oldest-Known Living Tree". This "Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece has been dendrocronologically dated to be more than 1,075 years old, living since the time of the Vikings..."
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