Breathing in nature

Real Flower Snail Figurines

According to the smithsonianmag.com, the world’s oldest bristlecone pine was a nearly 5,000 year old tree later named Prometheus. In 1964, a man named Donald Rusk Currey decided to use an increment borer to determine its age (a process that cuts a small hole into the center of the tree trunk, and is not intended to kill the tree). Unfortunately, the borer got stuck. He and a park ranger cut the tree down to remove the equipment, and when they counted the tree rings, they realized their mistake. Oops. This incident lead to better protection of the remaining bristlecone pines.

There’s some wiggle room about what can be called “the world’s oldest living tree.” The world’s oldest living single tree is the tree that the OP is referring to. Its name is Methuselah,and it is also around 5,000 years old. Since its location is unknown, nobody knows what it looks like. But it might be this tree here:

But technically, it isn’t the oldest living tree. Let me explain.

It turns out that root systems of trees can send up genetically identical saplings (aka clones) via their root systems. Like so:

Which means the original trunk can die, but since the root system is attached to other trees which give it nutrients, it lives on. The root system can theoretically do this indefinitely. So the tree trunks could be fairly young, but the roots could be large and very, very, very old. So the oldest “tree” isn’t a small grove, it’s a logic-defying forest.

I’d like you to meet Pando.

This male quaking aspen covers 106 acres and is ancient. I’m talking an estimate of 80,000 years. The trees you can see are just “shoots” he sent up, and their average age is 130 years old. He is his own forest. If trees could talk, I’d love to hear what he had to say.

He might be dying, due to insects and drought (hmm, wonder what could have happened to cause that). A section of Pando is being studied in an attempt to find a solution. But in the meantime, we can enjoy him for his beauty.

I would like to introduce you to the Glastonbury Thorn, or the Holy Thorn. The Glastonbury Thorn is an incredibly rare and bizarre type of hawthorn that flowers, startlingly, twice in the year - once just after midwinter. It’s found in Glastonbury, England, and it is a legendary tree.

Figure 1. Glastonbury, variously famed for the Festival, the Tor, the Holy Grail, maaaaaaybe being Avalon if you squint, the hippies, about six million identical vegetarian cafes and witchcraft shops, a goddess temple, and the Holy Thorn. People can’t decide if it’s all very neopagan or all very Christian, so they pretend it’s all very Special and Enlightened.

The Christmas-flowering nature and the Generally Recognized Cosmic Significance of Glastonbury (which is among other things maybe the Isle of Avalon) were quickly associated with Joseph of Arimathea, a Christian figure. The legend goes that when Joseph brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury (which he probably didn’t) he struck his thorn staff into the ground, where it became the legendary twice-blooming tree. This probably didn’t happen, but it’s the Holy Thorn. The first written record of the Holy Thorn was apparently in the 1500s, and very proud of it they were, too.

Now, in the English Civil War, sometime between 1642–1651, the Roundheads burned down the Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill, decrying it as regressive superstition. But people had saved cuttings and graftings of their beloved magical tree. They put it back. Because humanity. Humanity is a race of gardeners and hoarders and people who love stories and treasure and rebellion. Of course they put it back. Of course we put it back. That’s exactly the kind of fuckoff attitude that humanity has. And, you know, it’s REALLY HARD to propagate the Holy Thorn; you can’t grow it from seed; most cuttings seem to revert to normal hawthorn trees that bloom normally, once a year in the spring. It’s really tricky to capture that transient, fleeting, pointless mutation - the holiness of it. Think of the rebel gardeners in the 1650s - almost 400 years ago - ferociously and secretly and scientifically nurturing the grafts and saplings of this finicky, impossible plant. Humanity.

Holy Thorns have variously occupied Wearyall Hill since then. They all bloomed twice a year, once in midwinter.

in 2010, someone attacked the Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill. A vandal. This person chopped all the branches off.

Oh, how people mourned. They wrapped ribbons around the tree, decorated its cage, prayed to the goddess, did weird dances, cursed the vandal on Facebook, etc. etc. It was ineffective, but showed how passionately humanity cared for the holy trees. Christians, pagans, witches, biologists, everyone was PISSED OFF.

And the vandal returned, again and again, and destroyed the new growth. The vandal killed the Holy Thorn. And just a few days ago, in May 2019, the landowner finally uprooted the dead tree on Wearyall Hill.

What would you call that? Two bursts of singular and specific evil, in more than four hundred years of recorded history? Would you call that humanity? “Oh, humanity! Ugh, how disgusting! These two tiny events in the landscape of history definitely confirm how correct I am to sneer at my own species.” Or would you see the best of humanity in every living Holy Thorn? In the ones that bloom, twice a year, in churches and schools and private gardens around Glastonbury? In the mad, impossible ones that bloom twice a year in New Zealand and Australia? Where do you center your humanity? I know where I center mine.

There are dozens of Holy Trees. Many cultures have them. I just know the Thorn myself because I watched it all go down. But there are Holy Trees everywhere.

Appearing like trenches dragged into the earth, sunken lanes, also called hollow-ways or holloways, are centuries-old thoroughfares worn down by the traffic of time. They’re one of the few examples of human-made infrastructure still serving its original purpose, although many who walk through holloways don’t realize they’re retracing ancient steps.