If you could imagine a living tree as old as the pyramids of Egypt, what do you think it would look like? It would look like a bristlecone pine,Pinus longaeva, the oldest known tree species in the world.
The bristlecone pine only lives in scattered, arid mountain regions of six western states of America, but the oldest are found in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of California. There the pines exist in an exposed, windswept, harsh environment, free of competition from other plants and the ravages of insects and disease. The oldest bristlecones usually grow at elevations of 10,000 to 11,000 feet. The oldest known tree is "Methuselah", which is 4,789 years old. To keep Methuselah from harm, this tree isn't labeled, as the other trees are. An older tree called Prometheus was killed shortly after it was discovered in 1964. This happened when a geologist searching for evidence of Ice Age glaciers was taking some core samples from several bristlecones. Just as he realized he had found a tree over 4,000 years old, his coring tool broke.
Amazingly the U.S. Forest Service gave him permission to cut down the tree. Prometheus turned out to be 4,950 years old. It was a 300 year old tree when the pyramids were being built in Egypt. After people heard about this incident, the U.S. Forest Service tightened security around the bristlecones. I spent a week in the White Mountains studying with a group of photographers when I took this photo a tree at sunset. One of the many bonuses to attending was the opportunity to walk among and photograph them.
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