Living trees that predate the dinosaurs

It is perhaps easy to understand why some of the Earth’s largest trees, with roots spreading deep into the underworld as their upper limbs ascend to heaven, are charged with symbolic importance. Yet the origins of our fixation are perhaps surprising. To give one example, the Buddha was said to have attained enlightenment beneath the spreading limbs of a bodi, or pipal tree. That same specimen still reputedly flourishes at Bodh Gaya in Nepal. Even earlier, the first temple of Jerusalem was constructed from timbers King Solomon obtained specifically from the cedars of Lebanon, whose own sacred status recedes into the mists of prehistory.

Elderflora – a name coined by Jared Farmer for these venerable old masters – suggests that little has changed since Solomon’s time. We are still awestruck by such trees’ longevity. We entwine them with exciting new stories, but continue to recycle the legends. Farmer sets out to capture all this in a series of arboreal biographies that are global in scope.

He points out that only certain trees (including the ginkgo, cedar, redwood, cypress, araucaria and pine) have the potential for great age. They in turn belong to a group known as gymnosperms, which are among the earliest trees to have evolved. They not only long predate the dinosaurs but have outlasted the depredations of every kind of grazing predator; and herein perhaps lies the clue to their success. The tougher the conditions, the longer they seem to survive. The supreme example is the bristlecone pine, growing in the mountains of Utah, where some colonies enjoy a growing season of just 45 days in every year. Yet they have tolerated extreme levels of ecological poverty for five millennia and possibly more.

Farmer is good at drawing out these contradictions; but a fact he barely touches on is that some trees do remarkably well with persistent human care.