9,550-year-old tree is the world’s discovered in Sweden

Old Tjikko by Karl Brodowsky CC BY 3.0

Have you ever wondered how long trees live? Or which is the oldest living tree in the world? No matter, whether you thought about it or not, today we will tell you about the oldest living tree on this planet. It is in Sweden. Wondering how old it is? It is 9,550 year old. Yes! The individual clonal tree is 9,550 years old.

The Norwegian Spruce is called the “Old Tjikko,” which is the name of the dog of its discoverer. The ancient Norwegian tree was discovered by geologist Leif Kullman in 2004, who has a Siberian husky, on which he named this tree. Kullman is the Physical Geography professor at the Umeå University.

He determined the tree’s age with the help of a carbon-14 dating. The professor told Aftonbladet, “During the ice age sea level was 120 meters lower than today and much of what is now the North Sea in the waters between England and Norway was at that time forest.” He also said that low temperatures and winds made Old Tjikko “like a bonsai tree…Big trees cannot get as old as this.”

Although, trees are one of the longest living creatures on earth, 9,550 years is a very long time in itself. This scraggly spruce is 16-foot-tall in height and is still growing at the top of Sweden’s Fulufjället Mountain.

You would be amazed to hear that the tree is still living and continues to grow in Sweden. Maybe, it can cross the 10,000 mark. We hope so. Even you do, don’t you?