A tree known as the Alerce Milenario, located in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park, is more than 5000 years old, one researcher estimates.
Some 5400 years ago, about the time humans were inventing writing, an alerce tree may have started to grow here in the coastal mountains of present-day Chile. Sheltered in a cool, damp ravine, it avoided fires and logging that claimed many others of its kind, and it grew into a grizzled giant more than 4 meters across. Much of the trunk died, part of the crown fell away, and the tree became festooned with mosses, lichens, and even other trees that took root in its crevices.
Many dendrochronologists are likely to be skeptical of Barichivich’s claim, which has not yet been published, because it does not involve a full count of tree growth rings. But at least some experts are open to the possibility. “I fully trust the analysis that Jonathan has made,” says Harald Bugmann, a dendrochronologist at ETH Zürich. “It sounds like a very smart approach.”
In 2020, just before the pandemic hit, Barichivich and Lara cored part of the Alerce Milenario with an increment borer—a T-shaped drill that scientists use to excise narrow cylinders of wood without harming the tree. “In a way, the tree gave me a call that it was time” to take the core, Barichivich says. The plug of wood yielded roughly 2400 tightly spaced growth rings.
Barichivich says his method accounts for such possibilities. He plans to submit a paper to a journal in the coming months.
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