The oldest arboreal methuselah of the old continent is located in Italy, more precisely in the Pollino National Park. The exact coordinates, however, have not yet been revealed; it is known that it is 2000 meters high.
It is a Bosnian pine whose seeds ended up in the soil of the Pollino Park 1230 years ago. It began to sprout in the eighth century and has never stopped growing ever since. Even today, with twelve centuries of age, the tree continues to develop.
How was the age of the oldest tree in Europe detected
The precise dating of the ancestor of all European trees was made possible thanks to new technologies. In particular, the researchers, led by Dr. Gianluca Piovesan of the University of Tuscia, have developed an innovative technique, the results of which were published last year on Ecology: Ecological Society of America. They combined the dendrochronology (a dating method that correlates the annual growth of centuries-old trees with climatic factors) and dating to radiocarbon. This discovery showed that some plants are able to adapt to very extreme climate changes. And the study of the trunk and its growth can help to understand how the flora responds to changes. Also, analyze the trees centuries-old also serves to predict what impact, for example, global warming has on ecosystems.
The name
The team, after establishing the age of the Bosnian pine, also baptized it with an all-Italian name. Is called Italy, in honor of the king of Enotria who ruled the area of southern Italy in a period that embraced the Bronze and Iron Ages. Italus was born in Italy but a millennium before Italy itself. He lived through the Middle Ages, the Risorgimento and the Baroque. He witnessed the unification of Italy and the two world wars. There was when the current Italy had a feudal system, when it was a monarchy and when it became a republic. And who knows in how many other historical periods it will be present. We look forward to it as long as possible.
Peers of the oldest tree in Europe
The second oldest tree of the old continent is always a pine which is found, however, in the north of Greece. It is about 1075 years old and was discovered by Professor Oliver Konter of the University of Mainz. Until the discovery of Italus and the introduction of new technologies it was believed that the oldest tree in Europe was a Sardinian olive tree. It was assumed that it was even 4000 years old.
But subsequent studies based particularly on radiocarbon, much more reliable than counting the almost impossible circles on the trunk of the often gloomy olive trees inside, have debunked this hypothesis. The radiocarbon technique was used by Dr. Mauro Bernabei on trees oldest in the world: the olive trees of the Garden of Gethsemane, in Jerusalem. There he identified plants with about 1100 years of age.
