The first time I heard the name Methuselah, it was in the Book of Genesis. He was Noah’s grandfather, and was memorable because he supposedly lived to be almost 1,000 years old. He died around the same time as The Great Flood.

Much later in life, as I listened closer to stories about the Earth to do research for the Plant a Wish documentary project, I heard there was a famous tree with the same name. I knew instantly that it must be a really old tree.

A bristlecone pine living outside of Death Valley, California, the “Methuselah tree” is now estimated at being 4,841 years old – the oldest known living specimen on the earth. (To put that into perspective, it germinated around the time when the Great Pyramid was being built.) Its exact location is kept secret to prevent vandalism, and the conditions where it lives are nothing but the ultimate in extreme. Not much else is able to exist there.

“There is something a little fantastic, ” wrote Edmond Schulman in the March 1958 National Geographic, “in the persistent ability of a 4,000 year old tree to shut up shop almost everywhere throughout its stem in a very dry year, and faithfully to reawaken to add many new cells in a favorable year.”

What do we have to learn from dating a Methuselah tree? We learn that the oldest living things on earth are resilient creatures. They can stay alive when nothing else around them lives. They reach their roots and branches around to where life is – making them curve and twist like fine blown glass. The trunks of ancient bristlecone pine like Methuselah are so distorted that new rings may form at right angles to ones formed before (this makes their rings very difficult to count).

They’re not especially tall – and their relatively short stature is one reason scientists think they have such great survival skills – bigger is not better in the brutal environment where they live.

While on tour this summer, we decided to make a special stop at the University of Missouri in Columbia. The Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory is there, and we spent time with Dr. Mike Stambaugh (Researcher at the Lab) to talk about what tree rings can tell us about the environment that existed before written records were kept. We did a nice sit-down interview with him outside the Lab, and then he showed us around inside.

Have a look at Rachel’s “Clip of the Week”, where Dr. Mike shares some tree ring (dendrochronology) specimens with us.

Photo by Cesar Fernandez Photography.

Diagram copyright V. Moerbitz 2006.

Every week Rachel will select a short clip from what she’s seen and will share it with you here on our blog. We’ll call them “Rachel’s Picks of the Week”.

This week’s clip is from our Knoxville, Iowa planting, and features Dr. Bob Leonard, an anthropologist who knows a lot about the local history there. In this clip, we’re about to plant a red maple tree as our Iowa “Plant a Wish” tree, and he’s giving us a sense of place and a background on the landscape of the surrounding area. It’s just a short excerpt, but we feel it really tells us a lot – about Bob and his wonderful sensibilities, and about the very special place we chose to plant in while in Iowa in June. It also gives us a hint about the name of one of our favorite breweries – also located in Knoxville – called the Peace Tree Brewing Company! We also did a full interview with Dr. Bob for the documentary  – where he’s standing in front of the largest Cottonwood Tree in Iowa – not too far from this spot.

Enjoy the clip (below), and send us your comments. What does your town’s history (and local folklore) have to say about its trees?

Several people we met along the way had dropped his name as if his recent book “Bringing Nature Home” (Timber Press, 2007) would revolutionize the landscaping industry, which is currently worth about $50 billion dollar annually.

Why? Because Tallamy shares the data he’s collected over the course of 20 or so years studying insects’ dependency on native plants.

His precautionary tale (based on hard data) is pretty important: if we don’t plant native plants and trees in our backyards, we are taking a part in the dismantling of the food web we depend on for survival.

One of the most quoted parts of his book is where he states that one oak tree in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. can feed/house about 600 different species of Lepidopterae. That’s just moths and butterflies! (There are many more juicy tidbits in the book. Click on the book cover image above to purchase, and a percentage will go to help the Plant a Wish project!)

Once we heard the buzz, we knew we needed to meet him, plant a tree with him in Delaware, and interview him extensively for our film. And we hit a home run!

Here’s an excerpt from our forthcoming documentary. We plan to post about one per week, featuring various experts and tree caretakers we’ve met along the way so far.

Please enjoy!

Doug Tallamy is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, where he has written more than 65 research articles and has taught insect taxonomy, behavioral ecology, and other subjects. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities.