On the Road with Maya: Seriously Old Trees

Looking across the Owens Valley to the Sierra Nevada from the White Mountains

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is about an hour and a half drive south and east from Mammoth Lakes. The Owens Valley separates the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west from the White Mountains which are on the very western edge of the Great Basin Desert. Our drive from Mammoth Lakes was a study in contrast, taking us from the snow of the high Sierras through the arid Owens Valley and into the alpine desert climate of the White Mountains.

Bristlecone Pines growing on steep slopes in poor, rocky soil

At first glance these harsh conditions of high altitude, poor soil, little precipitation and extreme exposure to ice, wind and heat seem the most unlikely place to find the oldest living trees on earth. But the Bristlecones have survived here for more than 40 centuries, exceeding the oldest living giant sequoia trees by over 1,500 years. That makes the Bristlecone Pines older than the pyramids, some of them being aged at over 4,500 years!

Living wood and exposed dead wood create the beautiful multi colors
of the fantastically sculpted trees

Smaller first year cone (notice the bristles) and
second year cone which has already opened and dispersed seeds

So what is the Bristlecone’s secret to such great longevity? Great adversity it would seem. (Maybe there is a lesson in that somewhere…) To find out the answer to this mystery David, Maya and I took the Methuselah Walk, a 4.5 mile trail through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, past the oldest known living tree in the world. What an amazing time we had! These trees are just awe-inspiring – sculpted by the elements, battered by nature.

In the Methuselah Grove

The Methuselah tree is not signed for its protection
Somewhere in the grove is the oldest living tree in the world
and it is over 4,700 years old. Maybe this one is it?

The first thing we learned was that the nutrient-poor and highly alkaline dolomite soil of the White Mountains is actually a good thing for the Bristlecone Pine. Not many plants can tolerate this poor soil so the slow growing Bristlecone has a chance to grow nearly competition-free. Thriving in this thin soil some Bristlecone pines even seem to sprout from boulders.

Standing snags and living trees

Because the Bristlecone is so slow growing and has such limited resources in this harsh environment, its growth rings are thin. A one inch thickness of growth may take a century or even more to accomplish. This makes very dense wood and is another of the Bristlecone’s secrets to survival – hard, disease resistant wood. Even when a tree does die, a snag may stand thousands of years before it falls. This is one of the reasons the Bristlecone Pine is so important to scientists. Pieces of wood over 11,000 years old have been found. The tree ring patterns can be matched to other pieces and eventually to a living tree. From these patterns scientists can date the tree ring samples. Much has been learned about past climates from the tree rings.

Part of the tree has been 'sacrificed' for the rest of
the tree to continue to live and grow

One of the most amazing things about the Bristlecone Pines besides their great age is the contorted shapes many of them take. Extreme exposure to the elements causes a lot of the distortion but the way the tree adapts to this exposure is another factor. The Bristlecone has ‘learned’ to make sacrifices in order to keep itself alive. If a root is killed by erosion, disease or drought or lighting strikes part of the tree, the Bristlecone will die-back. It will sacrifice branches or even part of its trunk so that the tree can continue to live. This makes for very interesting trunks composed of partially living, partially dead tissue. And for some very old gnarly trees! Just remember the Bristlecone as you age – gnarly can be beautiful.

David and Maya by the trunk of The Patriarch, the largest Bristlecone Pine

And here's the whole tree!

After our walk among the ‘Methuselahs’ we took a 12-mile dirt road up a few thousand more feet to the Patriarch Grove. We arrived there in late afternoon just in time for a walk to the largest but not the oldest of the Bristlecone Pines, the Patriarch. The growing conditions and precipitation in this area of the forest are a little better and the trees grow faster here. Although the trees are only 3,000 – 4,000 years old in the Patriarch Grove, they are still battered by the elements. Their twisted shapes in the late afternoon sun made for a beautiful walk and some nice photos too. We arrived back in Mammoth Lakes well after dark and went right to bed, but what a great day...