Bristlecones
Methuselah Walk Found in '57
Here was a marvelous combination of the conditions to the great longevity we were looking for: the farthest limit of the dry forest edge, outcroppings of calcerous rock, and little rainfall--probably no more than 10 inches a year. These were just the trees we needed to date the bristlecone chronology of rainfall well into B.C. times.
After weeks of work along Methuselah Walk we found ourselves thinking of these oldest individuals as tending to belong to one of three rough types, or forms. There was the "massive slab" type, the "eagle's aerie" type, with numerous spreading snags, and, finally, there was the "pickaback" type, which we have found nowhere else.
The pickaback is a type of old bristlecone pine which can usually be sampled almost or right to its heart in a straight line through the small strip of remaining bark, if one starts low in the stem. Yet above this, near eye level, there are several separate stems. These are joined in what seems to be pickaback fashion, and it is easy to see three such stems as a Junior-Dad-Granddad sequence.
Microscopic examination of the first cores from one of these, which we soon got to calling the Great-granddad Pickaback, was another of those exciting events which this rich species can so bountifully provide.
Great-granddad Proves Oldest of All
We had broken our lonely camp, an hour by foot from Methuselah Walk, and driven along the plateau some miles to the White
Mountain Research Station, under the direction of the University of California, at over 10,000 feet.That evening I had our long cores from Great-granddad under the lens, and as I dated the outer centuries of rings and then went on to a quick count of the earlier rings, unusually crowded even for bristlecone, I felt excitement rise, for we were rapidly piling up the centuries. And when I got to within one inch of the inner end of our cores, I fairly shouted at my collegue working across the table. "Spade, we've got a 4,000-plus tree with the center present!" This was the first of all our four-millenium trees which had not reoded past the center.
More exact work later showed that the Great-granddad Pickaback had begun growth more than 4,600 years ago. Thus it stands right now as the oldest known living thing.
To determine the life history of this strange pickaback form of tree, we hardened our hearts and, at the very end of the field season, cut down a similar buty somewhat younger specimen for detailed study. With polished surfaces to study, we found that Junior, the youngest stem, was not at all a direct low branch of Dad. On the contrary, for far more than a millennium one of Dad's primary branches remained suppressed near the ground, its twings producing offshoots which in turn produces others in an innumerable succession.
At last, about A.D. 800, one of the newest offshoots was freed, perhaps by the dying away of Dad's branches above, and it soon became the dominant and evenutally the sustaining stem branch of the tree. And this was how Dad got started, too, some 1,500 years after the birth of Granddad, the original seedling, about 2000 B.C.
Written By: Dr. Edmund Shulman
Dendrochronologist, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
Associate Professor of Dendrochronology, University of Arizona, Tucson
Information received from: USDA Forest Service, Inyo National Forest
Edmund Shulman (1908 - 1958) first ventured into the Bristlecone Pine Forest in
1953 at the urging of the Forest Service District Ranger Al Noren, who had heard
of Schulman's search for old trees. Dr. Shulman was attempting to extend his
continuous tree-ring chronolgy when he sampled some of the trees in what is now
called Schulman Grove. His discovery of living 4,000 year-old trees and eventual
discovery of the oldest living tree in the world was his reward for years of
persistent research.
Dr. Shulman lived to be only 49 years old, but his contribution to the science
of dendrochronology and our knowledge of the natural history of the ancient
bristlecone trees remains highly significant. In 1959, this area of the Ancient
Bristlecone Pine Forest was named Schulman Grove, in his honor. The text in this
handout was written by Dr. Shulman before his death as the basis for a landmark
article on the bristlecone pines published in National Geographic, March 1958.
It has been edited for brevity.
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