This Spruce’s Roots Are 9,500 Years Old: 12 of Earth’s Oldest Trees and Where to See Them

Somewhere in the White Mountains of eastern California stands a Great Basin bristlecone pine called Methuselah. It is estimated to have started growing roughly 4,857 years ago, around 2833 B.C., which makes it older than the pyramids of Giza.

The U.S. Forest Service doesn’t mark it or say which tree it is, to protect it from vandals. Visitors can still walk the trails of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, and somewhere along the way they may pass it without knowing.

Pando, Latin for “I spread,” is a single male quaking aspen in Fishlake National Forest. More than 40,000 genetically identical trunks share one root system spread over 106 acres, and together they weigh about 13 million pounds.

Its age is unknown. Estimates range from several thousand years to many tens of thousands. The good news, NASA reported, is that the parts of Pando fenced off from deer and cattle are the ones growing new stems. It’s free to visit, off Utah State Highway 25 near Fish Lake.

Gran Abuelo, “Great-Grandfather,” is a Patagonian cypress in Alerce Costero National Park in southern Chile, more than 13 feet across. Its trunk is too wide to core all the way to the center.

So in 2022, scientists counted 2,400 rings in a partial core and used a statistical model for the rest. Their estimate is 5,484 years, with an 80% chance the tree is older than 5,000. Other tree-ring experts want more proof, so for now it’s an estimate. Visitors walk a forest trail to a platform that keeps them off the roots.

On Fulufjället mountain in Dalarna stands a Norway spruce that most hikers would walk past. The trunk you see is only a few centuries old. But the same tree has grown from the same roots, sending up new stems, since just after the last ice age: about 9,500 years.

Scientists worked out its age by radiocarbon-dating old wood under the tree. In early 2023, heavy snow broke off about a meter of its top, but the ancient part is underground. The tree grows in Fulufjället National Park, and hikers can walk up to it.

The National Park Service calls General Sherman, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, the largest tree in the world by volume: about 52,500 cubic feet of wood, or roughly 630,000 board feet, “enough to build 120 average-sized houses.”

It stands 274.9 feet tall and measures 102.6 feet around at the ground. It isn’t the oldest tree on this list, only the biggest. A paved trail leads down to it from the main parking area, and a shorter accessible trail starts from the Generals Highway.

In Great Basin National Park, the Bristlecone Trail starts at the end of Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive and climbs 600 feet over 2.8 miles round trip. At the end, as the National Park Service puts it, “The trees watching you are around 4,000 years old.”

Bristlecones grow near the tree line, in cold, wind and poor soil, and they grow very slowly. The park is also known for some of the darkest night skies in the country, which is why so many photos of these trees are taken under the stars.

Jōmon Sugi, a Japanese cedar on the island of Yakushima, is estimated to be more than 2,000 years old; some popular estimates go much higher. It was first identified in May 1966, and in June 2026 the island marked 60 years since its discovery.

Getting there is the hard part. Around 400 hikers a day set out on the 22-kilometer round trip, about 10 hours through a rainforest that is part of a World Heritage site.

El Árbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress in Santa María del Tule near Oaxaca, is about 2,000 years old, Mexico’s national forestry commission says. It is so wide that even 30 people holding hands with their arms stretched out can’t reach around it.

Its trunk is about 50 feet across. In 1992, the government moved the Pan-American Highway and paid for a well to protect the tree from exhaust fumes and a falling water table.

Tāne Mahuta, “Lord of the Forest,” is New Zealand’s largest known living kauri: 51.2 meters tall, with a trunk 13.77 meters around. Its age is estimated at somewhere between 1,250 and 2,500 years.

Kauri roots are shallow and easily damaged, and soil on shoes can carry disease. So in December 2024, a roughly NZ$1.2 million raised boardwalk opened and keeps every visitor off the forest floor. The walk takes five minutes and is wheelchair accessible.

In Big Tree Park in Longwood, Florida, a bald cypress called Lady Liberty stands next to a boardwalk. It is nearly 2,000 years old and about 90 feet tall.

Florida gets a lot of lightning, so the tree has its own lightning rod. The park is part of the larger Spring Hammock Preserve and is open every day from 8 a.m. until sunset, free of charge.

The Llangernyw Yew grows in the churchyard of a small village in Conwy county, north Wales. In 2002, a certificate from a yew-tree campaign put its age at 4,000 to 5,000 years, and the Tree Council named it one of 50 Great British Trees.

Not everyone is convinced. A regional archaeology survey calls the 4,000-year figure “a moot point”. Its center rotted away long ago, so nobody can count its rings. What’s left is a ring of huge stems around a hollow, and anyone can walk up to it.

A nonprofit in Copemish, Michigan, called the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive takes cuttings from ancient redwoods and giant sequoias and grows exact genetic copies of them.

Over the past 10 years, it has brought more than 200 cloned trees to lots in Detroit’s Poletown East neighborhood, working with local children, and the oldest of them have already reached 12 feet. The group calls it the world’s first old-growth giant sequoia forest in an inner city.