A seagrass has leapt to the top of the list of oldest known living organisms after being dated as being up to 200,000 years old.
The oldest living beings are all cloning organisms which can reproduce asexually, helping them to avoid damaging mutations and escape parasites.
Aside from the seagrass, the five oldest known living organisms, as listed in the new study, are:
1. King’s Lomatia – a Tasmanian plant that is believed to be 43,600 years old
HERE Why are these plants unable to sexually reproduce? Although this plant does produce flowers it has never produced fruit or seed. The reason for this is that the plant is a triploid. This means it has three sets of chromosomes instead of the normal two. This renders the plant sterile. Other Tasmanian species, L. tinctoria and L. polymorpha are diploid (two sets of chromosomes), as are other species of the genus and the subfamily to which it belongs.
2. Box huckleberry – also known as box-leaved whortleberry, a low North American shrub that is more than 13,000 years old
HERE The box huckleberry is a dwarf, evergreen shrub—a rare survivor of the last ice age. (!!) Individual colonies are “self-sterile”—that is, the berries grown from the pollen received from another part of the colony, will produce berries; however, these berries cannot spawn a new plant (colony). The box huckleberry spreads out by endlessly “cloning” itself, at a predicted rate of approximately six inches a year. A single colony (one plant) can cover over 8 acres. (!!)
3. Creosote bush – a plant common in the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan deserts of North America that is more than 11,000 years old
HERE Creosotebush is known to attain ages of several thousand years; some creosotebush clones may be the earth’s oldest living organisms. The age of the largest clone in Johnson Valley, California, is estimated at 9,400 years. The average estimated longevity of creosotebush may be about 900 years.
4. Quaking aspen – also known as white poplar, a tree native to cooler areas of North America that is more than 10,000 yearsn old
HERE Aspens do produce seeds, but seldom grow from them. Pollination is inhibited by the fact that aspens are either male or female, and large stands are usually all clones of the same sex. Even if pollinated, the small seeds (three million per pound) are only viable a short time as they lack a stored food source or a protective coating.[5]
5. Black Spruce – a species of spruce native to northern North America that is more than 1,800 years old.
HERE Black spruce account for about 30% of the overall forest land in Interior Alaska. The trees are extremely slow growing and susceptible to wildfire. Trees in Kim’s experimental forest range from 4.3 to 14.5cm in diameter at breast height. The largest of these trees may be as many as 150 years old.
The reproduction cycle of black spruce is dependent on fire. The trees produce lots of cones, and it is only with the extreme heat of a wildfire that the seeds are released and scattered by wind. Massive amounts of CO2 are released to the atmosphere during fire.
