Saturday & Sunday, March 16 & 17, 2024

[Dave]

I hope the weekend has begun well for you. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day meal: corned beef, cabbage, carrots and potatoes. I already have a package of carrots  (multi-colored, just for fun), we have a bunch of small potatoes growing in a large tub, and will pick up the corned beef and cabbage tomorrow morning.

My sunrise on Friday was special: something about the quality of the light caused everything in the scene to display remarkable clarity, and I really like how prettily the small yellow-orange areas work with the complementary blues...

   

[Rich]

Weekend greetings friends!
Dave, your menu sounds awesome! You really enjoy cooking as do I. I am not getting that ambitious though! I may go to Arbys after church tomorrow and get a Ruben sandwich to bring home. I have some Guinness beer in the fridge too.

I agree on your photo, the eyes goo right to the orange and then drink in all the splendor of the complementary blues. Awsome!

Here is another from Myrtle Beach SC. Some of the live Oak trees are 300 + years old.

[Quint]

I'm right with you guys. Corned beef and cabbage tomorrow and a Guinness in the refrigerator.

[Dave]

Thanks Rich. Nice capture of those magnificent oaks. 300 years is impressive. But consider what is regarded as the oldest living non-clonal tree: appropriately name Methuselah. it's a bristlecone pine in an undisclosed location in the White Mountains of California, dated as being over 4850 years old! (There are claims of older living trees but these claims have not yet been confirmed.)

Hi Quint.

I decided to do something in black and white, trying for a high-contrast look on a photo taken a few mornings ago...

   

About cooking: I go for intense flavors, using a more than ample amount of spices, usually very hot. So unless I'm cooking solely for myself, my wife has learned it's best to keep me oot of the kitchen.

May we all enjoy our feasts.

[Quint]

I love those Live Oaks, Rich.
Black and white works well here, Dave. The framing is perfect.

[Man From Ironbark]

The oldest living tree, considers that it is the same tree from the same seed.
Clonal trees are for some reason not considered as indvidual specimens. This is something that plagues my small brian. The seed started the tree, whether it has continued hence to continually clone itself may well be due to environmental factors and it does not necessarily lose any life along the way.

Wiki states: 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.

Then goes on to list a series of clonal trees and their estimated ages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ol...onal_trees
On the same page is all the rest of the story anout the oldest trees..

Yes some clonal species such as the quaking aspen, dies every 130 years or so and regrows from the roots.

Others like the Mangarlowe mallee continually not only regrow from the same lignotuber but also grow in a circle of additional lignnotubers established by the same unique tree.

Then there's the Lomatia tasmanica which is an endangered species with only one population, consisting of several hundred genetically identical individuals. Although it flowers occasionally, fruit production has never been observed, and it propagates vegetatively. Fossilized leaves are dated as at least 43,600 years old, found in sediments with a maximum age of 130,000.

Huon pine: Several genetically identical males that have reproduced vegetatively. Although single trees in this stand may be around 3 to 4 thousand years old, the stand itself as a single organism has existed for 10,000 years.
There has been pollen of the same level deposited on the lake each year in present times, as that found in the sediments dated at 10,300 years. All of the pollen has exact genetic material. In other words the 2,500 square metre copse area, is the same male tree that has been the same size in pollen production for longer than 10,300 years. So pending further discoveries of older pollen production, who really knows how long the tree has been looking for a female of the species? I mean if it was the same size way back then, how long did it take to grow to that size? What caused it to be the only tree on a mountainside from that species?  Huon pines exist elsewhere on Tasmania but this one tree remains alone and distanced from other populations. It is considered that this tree propagates itself by the weight of snow on branches forcing them to  fall to the ground and grow roots at the contact point.

The Wollemi pine: "Once you accept that a common, genetically identical stock can define a tree, then the absolute “winner” for oldest tree (or the oldest clonal material belonging to a tree) [in Australia] must go to the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis). It may be more than 60 million years old. The Wollemi pine clones itself, forming exact genetic copies. It was thought to be extinct until a tiny remnant population was discovered in Wollemi National Park in 1994... There is also substantial evidence that the tree has been cloning itself and its unique genes ever since it disappeared from the fossil record more than 60 million years ago."

The Antarctic Beech: Three individuals approximately 2000 years old are the parent trees to others in the surrounding forest; they grow clones by coppicing new shoots radially, forming a ring at the base of the parent tree trunk. These trees were isolated as continental drift put them in a place out of their usual climatic zone and have not produced a seedling for thousands of years but have continued on cloning themselves for somewhere less than 70 million years.

In the above instances the trees were isolated and as such could no longer make seed yet have continued on in spite of the conditions to live far longer than any tree classified as an individual by dint of the fact that it grew from a seed.

[Dave]

Fascinating information, MFI. Thanks for gathering and sharing it.

My small brain is also struggling with the “oldest living tree” question, but I think I lean towards a different conclusion than you.

If I understand correctly, the belief that clonal descendants represent the same individual as the “parent”, is based on the assumption that identical genotypes indicate the same individual. I'm not sold on that assumption. First, there are relatively few identical genotypes, due to mutation. For example, it is believed that in humans the mutation rate is such that there would be an estimated 30 nucleotide mutations per gamete. So even the genotype of the same individual human changes over the lifetime.

Second, what about identical twins? The position that identical genotypes equals the same individual means that clearly separate identical twins must be the same single individual.

[Man From Ironbark]

Some good clarity there Dave.

[Rich]

Thanks Dave! Yes I have heard of that pine tree. Good thing it is at an undisclosed location. For obvious reasons!

Good B&W of a lonely stretch of road!

Thanks Steve.

Peter and Dave, interesting discussion.