Some time ago I read an entertaining account of old trees, Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees by Jared Farmer. When I look back I don’t remember many details, except my impression that the book was very much focused on the US, which is understandable, or rather something I have learned to expect. The names of the chapters give an idea of the scope of the critically and entertainingly written book: Prologue, Introduction, Venerable Species,Memento Mori, Monuments of Nature, Pacific Fires, Circles and Lines, Oldest Known, Latest Oldest, Time to Mourn, Epilogue.
 
The first corner I have turned, on page 113, deals with German forest policy in the 19th century: “… the contradiction between forestry and forest-mindedness was partially resolved through the protection of “remarkable trees”, the inverse of “normal trees”. While the forest engineers segregated timber into age cohorts, they marked extraordinary specimens on their cadastral maps and placed stones around them – relicts to be preserved in the midst of rationalisation.” (Farmer 2022, 113) Farmer mentions that ‘remarkable’ first meant “freak forms of growth” but would soon come to mean “the biggest, the oldest, the most historic – trees associated with kings, or Luther, or Goethe, and ideally situated near spas and hiking paths.” (ibid.) This was of course interesting to think about after completing a two-year project called Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees not that long ago.
 
There is much talk about dendrochronology, tree rings and the search for the oldest tree in the world, usually a pine, but I have turned my next corner only more than hundred pages later. That is because junipers, my current performing partners, are mentioned. “When piñons and junipers expire their deaths don’t attract the same media attention as do lone trees or tall trees.” Moreover: In Utah and other western US states, ranchers and land managers continue to ‘chain’ junipers – kill them by dragging a heavy anchor chain between two bulldozers – thus encouraging the growth of annual grasses grazed by beef cattle.” (Farmer 2022, 270)
 
A familiar name pops up a little later, namely Pando, the huge aspen forest, which is actually one cloned individual, “a forest of one”, near Fishlake plateau in Utah. It is a candidate for the largest organism in the world, and supposed to be 80.000 years old. And in the same context there is a brief account of the Swedish spruce clone, Old Tjikko, which I have visited myself in 2019 and thought to be 11.000 years old, standing there since the ice-age. Farmer notes that a professor at Umeå University named the ancient clone Old Tjikko after his beloved departed dog and mentions the finding of a 9.550 year old piece of wood on the site as the only rather insubstantial evidence. He also mentions a book by a brooklyn-based photographer Rachel Sussman, The Oldest Living Thing in the World (2014), new to me. (Farmer 2022, 290-293) Farmer notes that “it’s current high ranking Google searches for the oldest living thing is less about botany than the never ending search for symbols. The latest oldest is a mobile site where the modern fetish for the new and the novel meets the modern fetish for the ancient and the original.” (Famrer 2022, 293)
 
Well, what other ways of being remarkable could make more sense?
 
 
Farmer, Jared (2022) Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees Picador 2022