The 3 Reasons This Tree Has Lived 5000 Years
Methuselah’s environment lacks nutrients, water, and oxygen. In other words, it’s the perfect place to grow very very old.
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Show Notes
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Great basin bristlecone pine tree: a species of pine tree that includes many of the longest-lived individual trees on Earth.
- Bark beetles: the common name for a subfamily of beetles that has destroyed millions of acres of forest across the Western United States.
- Terpenes: waxy chemicals that increase wood density in certain pine trees.
- Bark morphology: a trait of certain bristlecones in which strips of exposed wood extend up and down the tree, allowing them to pass nutrients even when other parts of the trunk have died.
- Dolomite: a type of rock high in magnesium and calcium that turns into extremely alkaline soils.
- Extremophile: an organism that is tolerant to environmental extremes.
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