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3,500 Year Old Florida Tree Dies of Natural Causes
hondo77 writes with an excerpt from The Daily "'Mother Nature claimed one of her oldest living specimens (Monday) in a freak fire that destroyed a 3,500-year-old bald cypress tree towering over central Florida. Known as "The Senator," or simply "The Big Tree," the hollowed-out majestic timber, standing at 118 feet tall, ignited before dawn. Firefighters watched helplessly as the oldest tree east of the Mississippi — and the fifth oldest in the world — blazed and then collapsed in a heap of flaming embers.' The fire likely started by 'either a weeks- old lightning strike that smoldered until combustion occured, or friction caused by buffeting winds that ignited a spark and erupted in flames.'"
This one would have had a TON of boring stories about animals walking by.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I live right by the park, I could have thrown a rock at the tree. It happened January 16th, this story is old.
Natural causes? Freak fire? Which is it?
In Florida? Are you serious? Does anyone else realize that unless there's a hurricane Florida (especially central Florida) is basically a dead zone for winds. That's not to say a freak wind storm couldn't occur but I've lived in some pretty windy places and never heard of a fire started by buffeting winds. Lightning, yes. I've googled for it, can someone point me to evidence of this phenomena actually happening? Having tried to get a spark or start fire by rubbing two sticks together, I can tell you that it would indeed by a freak occurrence if wind did just that.
My work here is dung.
Actually, there's a good answer for that: One of the really fulfilling and profounding affirming activities for nerds to engage in on a tech / "news for nerds" site is to complain about articles that don't fit that profile. But the problem is that if there never were any irrelevant articles, nobody would have anything to complain about, and thus we would have a compromised experience. It's paradoxical, but everything seems to be going according to plan.
On one hand one of the oldest trees in the world is no more, but on the other hand a Senator died in a fire...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
(anyone here know off-hand where the other 4 older trees are?)
This is Slashdot, so I don't expect anyone here to know this, but TFA helpfully provides information about the other oldest trees :)
I figured this is science/biology related, and - I know, it seems impossible - but there is nerd stuff out there that isn't just IT stuff.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Wow.
I read the article, and totally missed that. Kind of an interesting example of conditioning. As soon as I saw the blue email link after the conclusive paragraph, my brain basically said "ok, article is over" and stopped reading. My brain probably assumed the rest of the text was the usual "other thigns you may be interested in" cruft you tend to find.
While I agree it maybe doesn't belong on Slashdot, I actually live about 5 minutes from the park where this tree was and would take my kids there to see this tree. Pretty magnificent. So, I at least find it cool to see it on /. even if it doesn't "really" belong here. Also, disappointed to see it go. I don't know if my kids were old enough to really remember seeing it from the last time we went there. I had been meaning to get back there, but, you know, who expect a 3500 year old tree to be suddenly gone. Also, they now suspect arson and not natural causes as originally thought.
"(anyone here know off-hand where the other 4 older trees are?)"
Methuselah, believed to be about 4,800 years old. It's a species of pine tree somewhere in California. The exact location is kept a secret. This is believed to be the oldest tree still alive.
Most of the other oldest trees still living are giant sequoia scattered around California. I think Canada, Australia and Chile also have a few trees that were centuries old when Greek democracy was new.
I wondered the same.
They can normally tell if a fire was started by an arsonist by finding accelerant residue, such as petrol.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Wow. I wonder if that ever happened before.
(tree) NERD!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist!
Also, someone just pointed out to me that they article actually lists the other 4 trees.. cleverly disguised as "further reading" cruft after the authors email. The thing about the one in California being kept secret is kinda neat though (and not mentioned in the article)! Canada isn't mentioned, but I've seen some _huge_ trees in BC .. wouldn't surprise me if one of them was comparable.
I think it was the light from Venus that was focused through a lens of marsh gas that started the fire.
Why shouldn't it be on /. ?
This is a 'nerdy' item, and a rather sad one as well. Rather this than the endless, tedious and (to me and many others) redundant posts relating to US politics.
Smivs on the intertubes!
You decided I wasn't an orc. I'll never forget you.
I'm guessing he means BoingBoing.
When I hear "boing boing" I just think "TITS!", but apparently it's a new aggregator..
which is totally what she said
When I hear "boing boing" I just think "TITS!", but apparently it's a new aggregator..
The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. In fact ....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You need to leave something to profounding fulfil the Grammar Nazis, dude.
which is totally what she said
You live 5 minutes from the park and you don't know if your kids were old enough to remember seeing it from the last time you went there?
How is this even possible? Did they, like, never go outside or something?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There is an interesting article on the oldest trees in the world in this article. It also has a good picture of The Senator before the fire.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
I saw lots of amazing perspective shifting stuff while getting dragged around on vacation by my parents as a kid .. and I don't remember most of it. At a certain age, stuff like this means nothing to most people.
Kinda like how stuff that put me to sleep in school has turned into a serious interest many years later. Sounds really stupid, but it was actually a jaw dropping realization that I could actually go to a museum on my own accord.. no bus or permission slips or anything required..
I think that's what was meant.
Ok, I'm not normally one of the guy's who says this... but
Guy's what? Guy's sockpuppet? And which guy?
Slashdot isn't a tech site, it's a nerd site. The environmental and bioligical sciences are as interesting to us nerds as astronomy, physics, chemistry, any of the other sciences, OR technology.
What is there to discuss here?
If you hadn't tried so hard to make first post you would have been able to see for yourself.
Free Martian Whores!
Methuselah, believed to be about 4,800 years old. It's a species of pine tree somewhere in California. The exact location is kept a secret. This is believed to be the oldest tree still alive.
Methuselah is a bristlecone pine. And there's a pretty good reason for the secrecy. The article mentions the fear of vandalism. But in the case of the bristlecones, something worse happened. In 1964, there was another one nicknamed Prometheus that was believed to be the oldest tree. The US Forest Service sent a guy in with a chainsaw to cut it down so they could verify its age. It turned out to be over 4900 years old. No older bristlecones have been found. Other forestry people were sufficiently outraged by this that it turned into a standard textbook-level warning, and people who study the oldest bristlecones refuse to report their locations, to protect them from the Forest Service as well as from common vandals.
Actually, there are a number of plants that aren't trees that are known to be older, but their living parts are all young. The textbook example is the creosote bush, which sends up offshoots around its edges, and then the central parts die off. This produces "creosote rings" that spread out across the landscape. A few have been found whose oldest remnants are dated to over 11,000 years. But the living parts are only a few centuries old.
The question "What's the oldest living thing?" turns out to be trickier to answer than you might expect. There are more than one way to define a "living thing", and there are several ways to measure age.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
15% of us die of accidents, violence or suicide in our 80 year lifespans. Eliminating all natural causes of death would only extend our lives so much, unless we practiced a culture of extreme safety. (This has been the theme of many scifi stories about immortals.)
Some trees may essentially immortal, but suffer from weather or animal trauma etc. Almost nothing is alive older than 10K years.
I have never understood these complaints. If a story generates a lot of comments and discussion, then whether or not you or some other people feel that it "belongs" on slashdot is irrelevant - it has been found interesting by enough people in the slashdot community to warrant further discussion. Stories about some really niche piece of technology that you would probably say are the heart and soul of slashdot are the ones that generate ~30 comments and quickly fade into oblivion. Interestingly you can usually spot these stories because they have a lot of acronyms in the title. I'm not saying that those stories shouldn't be posted at all, I'm just saying your criteria for what *belongs* or doesn't belong on slashdot is off base. Let the market decide.
For the record I think a story about a 3,500 year old living organism dying is incredibly interesting!
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Florida is supposed to be subtropical with a relatively wet climate, but at the moment the place seems bone dry. Many wetlands have simply dried up and people fear that even most 'gator holes will not be deep enough for the reptiles to survive any significant frosts (the poor critters look pretty skinny as it is). Therefore, I guess it's not totally surprising that parts of the forest seem to be going up in flames spontaneously. When I lived there as a kid in the 60s and 70s, drought was never an issue, but now it has been for more than the past decade. To me, this is yet another strong sign that, climatologically, we live in a changing world.
This story happened weeks ago, and originally it was suspected as arson, and that it was in too dense of an area for Firefighters to reach. Here is a link to the NPR story.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/01/17/145342304/one-of-worlds-oldest-cypress-trees-the-senator-burns-in-florida.
This happened in mid-January. "On Monday (Jan. 16, 2012) Seminole County firefighter Al Caballero applied water to the smoldering base of The Senator. "
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
There's a Radiolab episode that covers the story of Prometheus being cut down. Sad story.
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/
It just spent winters in Florida.
Have gnu, will travel.
Was it natural causes or was it... MURDER?! Certainly no one would SUSPECT the other trees in the area! But they all just STOOD there!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A legitimate question. With a reasonable answer. While I live really close to this park, there are several in the area. As a playground there are other parks in the area that my kids prefer and so we go there more often. It's been maybe 2 years since we have been to that park. My oldest is now almost 9, so I'm sure he remembers going there, but I don't know if he really remembers the tree. My daughter just turned 5. I'm sure she doesn't remember going there.
I like how the damn article refers to this tree being majestic but then doesn't even feature a photo of the tree. Instead they present the reader with three useless photos.
In this day and age it's inexcusable for a news site to not feature big, quality photos. It took me all of 5 seconds to do a search online and find a good photo of the tree. You mean to tell me the so-called journalist who wrote this article couldn't have done the same? And then get some intern to get in touch with the rights-holder for permission to run it?
People interested by that may also be interested to know the demise of the former oldest living thing in the world, the Prometheus Tree, which a graduate student cut down so he could count the rings.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
In 1964, there was another one nicknamed Prometheus that was believed to be the oldest tree. The US Forest Service sent a guy in with a chainsaw to cut it down so they could verify its age. It turned out to be over 4900 years old. No older bristlecones have been found. Other forestry people were sufficiently outraged by this that it turned into a standard textbook-level warning, and people who study the oldest bristlecones refuse to report their locations, to protect them from the Forest Service as well as from common vandals.
I know it's "just" a tree, and I'm not one to go cavorting about with greenpeace and whatnot, but wtf? What kind of stupidity is that- I can't believe they did that. The thing was close to 5,000 years old and they just killed it out of curiosity?
Anything that lasts that long deserves some respect.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.