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World's Oldest Tree To Be Cloned
Pirogoeth writes "Scientists have taken seedlings from the world's oldest tree, a 4,768-year-old bristlecone pine named Methuselah, and plan on plan on altering them to make them clones of the ancient tree. Their goal is to study them to find the secret of their longevity and to see if cloned trees can survive in different climates."
Not confirmed but maybe the Fortingall Yew may well be older. Well worth a visit as it is in a very beautiful part of the country...
The only Good System is a Sound System
Memo to all y'all city folk out there in
You cut off a little piece of the branch, plop it in some potting soil, keep it wet, and in a coupla months, la voila: It's sprouted a root system!!!
Just about 100% of all commercial plant offerings are clones [possibly grafted onto a foreign root system, which is itself likely a clone].
Oh no, it's the invasion of the cloned trees!!!!!!! Run for your lives!!!!!!
or something thats even older. BUt this is probably the oldest actual tree. ALthough i thought they found one in england that was older?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Now I can attain immortality through the simple process of replacing my feeble human body with enduring tree parts. Mwahahahahahahahaha.
Scientists have taken seedlings from the world's oldest tree, a 4,768-year-old bristlecone pine named Methuselah, and plan on plan on altering them to make them clones
Looks like they've already gotten off to a good start, by cloning the words in the article. *rimshot*
(Isn't anyone going to welcome our new Bristlecone masters?)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
by taking a cutting and planting it.
This article isn't much in the way of science news.
But really, is there any zygote-modifying plant cloning (i.e like they do with animals) going on anywhere? Please provide links.
Too bad you can't do that with humans. You know, like chop off a leg, plant it in the ground and watch it sprout into a replica of the original...
[ scientist in forest ]
[ bumbling around ]
[ See REALLY LARGE tree ]
[ Takes Sample ]
[ Ents Crush Him, after much deliberation ]
Fini.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
In 1989, a vandal used a strong poison and nearly killed the Treaty Oak, a 500-year-old Live Oak said to be the place where Stephen F. Austin signed a treaty with the local Native American tribes. Heroic efforts (funded by H. Ross Perot) went into saving the tree, but nobody knew if they would be successful.
To preserve the tree's legacy, it was "cloned" -- several still-living branches were rooted just as the parent poster described. One of these trees is now growing next to the original. It's clearly an exact genetic duplicate, and if that's not a clone, I don't now what is.
I agree with the parent poster -- what's the big deal? Why can't they just cut off a branch of the Methuselah tree and root it?
By the way, the story of the Treaty Oak has a happy ending. Despite fears that it would only be good for commemorative pen sets, the tree made a comeback, and started bearing acorns again in 1997 -- 8 years after the attack. Seedlings are now available, for "just" $125 bucks.
The poisoner, on the other hand, likely had a bit rougher time -- 9 years in a Texas state prison. No word on the fate of his acorns...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You seem to imply that the article is uninteresting because of the methods used. The interesting part is that they're reproducing a bloody old tree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it'll be the oldest thing ever to be 'cloned'. This is interesting, even if it is easy to do, because it'll allow all kinds of experiments that you wouldn't want to carry out on the original.
The story contains just over 50 words. Is it really that hard to edit out the repeating words in the middle of the post?
"plan on plan on"
to study and eventually clone the world's great trees.
So they are planning to clone 'em. The initial seedlings aren't considered full clones because...
The seedlings aren't exact copies of Methuselah...they only contain half of the gnarled old tree's genetic materials.
So they add more DNA to complete the process:
the Milarchs plan to graft them with more genetic material taken from Methuselah
I think that parts from the branch or cones would be considered offspring of the parent - it's the extra DNA splicing that makes it a clone.
A binary search tree or a red-black tree? Seriously, I "clone" these all the time.
"Joan of Arc, up top!" - Ghandi, Clone High
It's called propagation, typically through cuttings.
Many ornamental plants are done this way.
Specifically, all of those pretty Christmas Poinsettias are froma single mother plant.
They find the one plant that exhibits the characteristics they like, take cuttings, make more plants, make more cuttings, etc, etc, etc.
Most everything you see in the Garden Center at your local Home Depot are made this way.
The bristelocones grow at a high elevation (10,000 ft +) in dry, alkali soil. I'm not sure that traditional cloning techniques for trees will work for this variety of tree.
But, Thats not the point of the article. They wan t to see what the clones will do in different environments. How well do they survive, what kinds of deformities they will grow. And maybe even the secret to why this tree is so old. Maybe someday we'll all have huge trees like this one to cut up into 2x4's :-D just think about how many 2x4's are already in a 4K year old tree :-D
~ryan
You must be doing something wrong, 'cause I cloned my hobo army this way.
> Memo to all y'all city folk out there in /. land:
> People have been cloning plants since time
> immemorial.
Memo to those who know less than everything about botany: traditional methods don't work on all plants.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I guess not technically called trees (then again bonsais, which tend to be pretty small, low to the ground, are really a tree/shrub grown in a pot), however here are a couple articles concerning organisms (read shrub or bush) which may be older than the Methuselah.
http://www.death-valley.us/article652.html
http://www.exn.ca/Stories/1996/10/21/01.asp
a quick google came up with a 43,000 year old plant (Tasmanian native holly), which has already been cloned in order to save it.
http://forests.org/archive/spacific/ausoldpl.htm
Most flowering wisteria you see were grown from cuttings as well. If you grow one from seed, you have to wait ten years to see whether you bought one that blooms.
Where can I get a root kit for *that* system?
Hehe, there's something in the article I don't really get. Only half of the seedlings' genes were inherited from the great pine, whereas the other half came from another pine. That's like how I was made. Half of my genes are my mother's and the other half come from my dad. And I'm not a clone.
These guys have simply grew plants from the seeds of the great pine, just as the pine would have reproduced in nature, so I don't really see the point of the whole thing, and I can't figure out why anybody feels like putting a label "cloning" on this story.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
Unfortunately, this is not true. It works for only a limited number of species. Take some salix, for example, and shove it in the ground ... bingo. New salix. Try it with your average Pinus, though, and all you'll get is stakes.
for sure. Chop the tree down and count the rings.