Natural History Wanderings

The world’s tallest, largest and oldest individual trees are all found in California.

The tallest tree is a  Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). It is found in Redwood National Park in Northern California. It is  379 feet 4 inches,  It’s called “Hyperion.” It contain 18,600 cubic feet (530 m³) of wood, and is  roughly 700–800 years old.  Researchers believe that woodpecker damage at the top prevented the tree from reaching 380 feet. The location of the tree is not public to protect it from human traffic that would upset the ecosystem the tree inhabits.

The largest tree is a Giant Sequoia  Sequoiadendron giganteum. The General Sherman Tree  the largest tree by volume is found in Sequoia National Park 7,000 feet above sea level. By volume, it is the largest known living single stem tree on Earth. It has a height of 83.8 metres (275 ft), a diameter of 7.7 metres (25 ft), an estimated bole volume of 1,487 cubic metres (52,513 cu ft), and an estimated age of 2,300–2,700 year

The President second is the second largest tree and it holds nearly two billion leaves. Giant Sequoias grow more when they’re older. The older they get, it seems, the faster they grow.

The oldest verified individual trees are Bristlecone Pines Pinus longaeva.  The oldest tree is n unnamed and is 5062–5063 years old. The oldest is the Methuselah  age 4844–4845. They are found in Inyo National Forest and the White Mts. The locations are kept secret to protect the trees. Bristlecone Pines are medium-sized tree, reaching 5 to 15 m (16 to 49 ft) tall and with a trunk diameter of up to 2.5 to 3.6 m (8 ft 2 in to 11 ft 10 in). The bark is bright orange-yellow, thin and scaly at the base of the trunk.

There is some controversy around the oldest tree as there are trees that are claimed but not verified to be older. They are The Sisters Olive Trees of Noah’ alleged to be the world’s oldest living olive tree in  Bechealeh, Batroun district,Lebanon. The ages of these trees are estimated but not verified to be 6,000–6,800 years old.

There are also clonal trees which live even longer than individual trees. According to Wikipedia:

As with all long-lived plant and fungal species, no individual part of a clonal colony is alive (in the sense of active metabolism) for more than a very small fraction of the life of the entire clone. Some clonal colonies may be fully connected via their root systems, while most are not actually interconnected, but are genetically identical clones which populated an area through vegetative reproduction. Ages for clonal colonies, often based on current growth rates, are estimates

A clonal colony can survive for much longer than an individual tree. A colony of 47,000 quaking aspen trees (nicknamed “Pando“), covering 106 acres (43 ha) in the Fishlake National Forest of the United States, is considered one of the oldest and largest organisms in the world. The colony has been estimated to be 80,000 years old, although tree ring samples date individual, above-ground, trees at only an average of about 130 years.^[1][2][3][4] A colony of Huon pine trees covering 1 hectare (2.5 acres) on Mount Read, Tasmania is estimated to be around 10,000 years old, as determined by DNA samples taken from pollen collected from the sediment of a nearby lake. Individual trees in this group date to no more than 4,000 years old, as determined by tree ring samples.