A social media post accompanying an image of a large baobab tree is being shared widely with a claim that it is a 6000 year old baobab in Tanzania. The post further claims that it is the oldest tree on earth. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Image of the 6000 year old baobab tree in Tanzania ; it is oldest tree on earth.
Fact: In general, bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) of California’s White Mountains are considered as the oldest living trees on earth not Baobabs. Methuselah, a specimen of bristlecone and is dated in 1957 as being 4852 years old as of 2020, is considered as the oldest living tree. According to science journals, baobabs are longest and largest flowering trees but not the oldest, they can live up to 2000-3000 years. As far as the viral image is concerned, thought the exact location of the tree is not known, it is pretty evident that the particular baobab tree seen in the image is not the oldest tree on earth. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Oldest trees in the World :
According to Guinness World Records it is not baobab but bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) of California’s White Mountains, USA that are deemed as the oldest living individual trees on earth.
Dr Edmund Schulman (USA) discovered a specimen of bristlecone and is dated in 1957 as being 4852 years old as of 2020. The tree is named ‘Methuselah’. However, before his death, Schulman discovered another old specimen of living tree in the White Mountains. And it is carbon dated in 2009 as being 5070 years as of 2020; this unnamed tree is currently the oldest verified living tree in the world. However, the precise locations of these trees are kept secret to protect them from vandalism/damage from over-trampling.
Further, the Guinness records listed the longest living individual trees species, however, baobab is not featured in this list. ‘Other long-lived individual tree species include giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum, western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis and Patagonian cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides), all of which have had specimens aged to between 3,000–4,000 years and over’ reported the Guinness records. News reports that claimed bristlecone pines as the oldest living tree species can be read here, here, here and here.
Recently, a Science journal reported that an alerce tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) known as Alerce Milenario or Gran Abuelo (great-grandfather) tree, might be claimed as the oldest living tree on earth.
Using a combination of computer models and traditional methods for calculating tree age, Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean environmental scientist who works at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Paris, has estimated that the Alerce Milenario is probably more than 5000 years old. That would make it at least 1 century senior to the current record holder: Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in eastern California with 4853 years’ worth of annual growth rings under its gnarled bark’, reported the journal. However it is not officially recognized yet.
Age of Baobabs :
Baobabs are considered as the largest and longest living flowering trees but not the oldest one. They can live up to 2000-3000 years.
According to a scientific journal published in Nature, scientists discovered all the stems of a dead sacred baobab in Zimbabwe in 2010 and 2011. Dating of these specimens revealed that it was 2450 years old, making it the oldest known accurately dated African baobab and angiosperm.
Further, speaking to AFP, Tom Kirkwood, an expert in tree aging, said that he had never heard of a baobab tree that lived to be 6,000 years old.
As far as the image is concerned, the image is being shared on internet at least since 2004. Although the exact location of the tree is not known, earlier posts claimed that it is from Senegal. However, the above explanation confirms that the baobab tree shared in the viral post is not the oldest living tree on earth.
To sum it up, this image does not show the oldest tree on earth. Baobabs are not the oldest tree species on earth.
