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World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

sciencenorway.no

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Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#11

Post by vesinisa »

__alexs wrote: post #4
vesinisa wrote: post #3

That title is rather clickbaity for a "science" magazine. Crucially, the tree prominently featured in the large picture is not 10,000 years old and only its root system originates from that period: > Today Old Tjikko’s tree trunk is only five metres high. Although the spruce may have had many such trunks over the millennia, the tree's root system has survived all these years. No part of today’s living tree is as old…

What is a "tree"? None of the leaves on Methuselah are 5000 years old, but we say that the tree is that old. Kind of a Tree of Theseus situation going on.

Assuming you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_(tree)

It says that its trunk is about 5,000 y.o. as counted through growth rings. I would think most people would understand this to be the proper age of a "tree".

Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#12

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

vesinisa wrote: post #3

That title is rather clickbaity for a "science" magazine. Crucially, the tree prominently featured in the large picture is not 10,000 years old and only its root system originates from that period: > Today Old Tjikko’s tree trunk is only five metres high. Although the spruce may have had many such trunks over the millennia, the tree's root system has survived all these years. No part of today’s living tree is as old…

I thought Pandora is 80,000 years old. Where did you get 14,000?

Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#15

Post by kebman »

Just to be clear, the tree is found in Dalarna in Sweden, though this is indeed East of Trysil in Norway. Since Sciencenorway.no (!) is a Norwegian outlet, they need to at least attempt to make their articles relevant for Norway.

The outlet is the English version of Forskning.no. Forskning means research in Norwegian, but in this instance it really means science. Their focus is to bring news about what Norwegian scientists are up to with popular science articles for the masses. That's why some of their articles seem a tad tabloid at times.

The tradition in Norway is that the most tabloid articles are published during the main summer vacation, when newspapers employ interns and temp journalists. We even have a word for such articles: Agurknytt. It means cucumber news, and implies that the article is desperately trying to make news out of something that isn't.

Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#16

Post by kebman »

vesinisa wrote: post #3

That title is rather clickbaity for a "science" magazine. Crucially, the tree prominently featured in the large picture is not 10,000 years old and only its root system originates from that period: > Today Old Tjikko’s tree trunk is only five metres high. Although the spruce may have had many such trunks over the millennia, the tree's root system has survived all these years. No part of today’s living tree is as old…

Crucially the tree is in Sweden and not Norway xD

Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#17

Post by alkonaut »

vesinisa wrote: post #3

That title is rather clickbaity for a "science" magazine. Crucially, the tree prominently featured in the large picture is not 10,000 years old and only its root system originates from that period: > Today Old Tjikko’s tree trunk is only five metres high. Although the spruce may have had many such trunks over the millennia, the tree's root system has survived all these years. No part of today’s living tree is as old…

The cool thing about it and what does give it the 10k year feel is that it grows in a spot that was only low enough for trees to grow 10k years ago because the mountain has risen 100 meters since, and it couldn’t start growing there now.

Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#18

Post by lgeorget »

vesinisa wrote: post #3

That title is rather clickbaity for a "science" magazine. Crucially, the tree prominently featured in the large picture is not 10,000 years old and only its root system originates from that period: > Today Old Tjikko’s tree trunk is only five metres high. Although the spruce may have had many such trunks over the millennia, the tree's root system has survived all these years. No part of today’s living tree is as old…

Unsurprinsingly, Wikipedia has a list of the oldest known trees in the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

Re: World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border

#20

Post by zrobotics »

kebman wrote: post #15

Just to be clear, the tree is found in Dalarna in Sweden, though this is indeed East of Trysil in Norway. Since Sciencenorway.no (!) is a Norwegian outlet, they need to at least attempt to make their articles relevant for Norway. The outlet is the English version of Forskning.no. Forskning means research in Norwegian, but in this instance it really means science. Their focus is to bring news about what Norwegian scie…

So equivalent to popular science for the US crowd.

I'm curious, why 'cucumber' news? Just due to the harvest time of the plant, or is there some cultural significance to the term?

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