Prometheus (tree) Totally Explained

Everything about Prometheus Tree totally explained

Prometheus (aka WPN-114) was the nickname given to the then oldest non-clonal organism ever discovered, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) tree at least 5,000 years old which grew at the tree line near Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada, USA. The tree was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and U.S. Forest Service personnel for research purposes, though at the time they claimed they didn't know of its world-record age. The circumstances leading to the cutting of the tree remain controversial. Different versions of the event and the decision-making process behind it exist, and only a few of even the most basic facts are agreed upon. The nickname of the tree refers to the mythological figure Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. The tree has only been surpassed in age by certain clonal organisms, which don't contain original tissue from the earliest parent organism.

About the tree

The tree was a member of a population of bristlecone pine trees growing at the tree line on the lateral moraine of a former glacier on Wheeler Peak, in what, since 1986, has been Great Basin National Park, in eastern Nevada. Wheeler Peak is the tallest mountain in the Snake Range, and the tallest mountain entirely within the state of Nevada. The bristlecone pine population on it's divided into (at least) two distinct sub-populations, one of which is accessible by a popular interpretive trail. Prometheus however, grew in an area reachable only by off-trail hiking. In either 1958 or 1961, a group of naturalists who admired the grove in which the tree grew gave names to a number of the largest or most distinctive trees, including Prometheus. The designation of WPN-114 was given by the original researcher, Donald R. Currey, and refers to the 114th tree sampled by him for his research in Nevada's White Pine county.
The ring count of a section of the tree by Currey was 4844. A few years later, this was increased to 4862 by Donald Graybill of the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. However, the ring counts were done on a trunk cross section taken about 2.5 m (8 feet) above the original germination point of the tree, because the innermost rings were missing below that point. Adding in the years required to reach this height, plus a correction for the estimated number of missing rings (which are not uncommon in trees growing at tree line), it's probable that the tree was at least 5000 years old when cut. This makes it the oldest unitary (i.e non-clonal) organism ever known, exceeding the Methuselah tree of the White Mountains' Schulman Grove, in California by about 200 years.
Whether Prometheus should be considered the oldest organism ever known depends on the definition of "oldest" and "organism" one uses. For example, certain sprouting or clonal organisms, such as creosote bush or aspen, could have older individuals if the entire clonal organism is considered. Under this standard, the oldest living organism is a quaking aspen grove in Utah known as Pando, at 80,000 years old. In a clonal organism, however, the individual clonal stems are nowhere near as old, and no part of the organism at any given point in time is particularly old. Prometheus was thus the oldest non-clonal organism yet discovered, with its innermost wood over 5000 years of age. It is possible, however, that an older specimen exists that hasn't yet been dated. Bristlecones are notoriously hard to date because of their extremely contorted growth, and cutting of old trees is no longer allowed.

The cutting of the tree

In the 1950s dendrochronologists were making active efforts at finding the oldest living tree species, in order to use the analysis of the rings for various research purposes, such as the evaluation of former climates, the dating of archaeological ruins, and the basic question of finding the oldest living things. Bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of California and elsewhere were discovered by Edward Schulman to be older than any species yet dated. This spurred interest in finding very old bristlecones, possibly older than the Methuselah tree, aged by Schulman in 1957 at over 4700 years. Donald R. Currey was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying the climate dynamics of the Little Ice Age using dendrochronology techniques. In 1963 he became aware of the bristlecone populations in the Snake Range and on Wheeler Peak in particular. Based on the size, growth rate and growth forms of some of the trees he became convinced that some very old specimens existed on the mountain, and cored some of them, finding trees exceeding 3000 years. Currey was not, however, able to obtain a continuous series of overlapping cores from WPN-114. Here, stories diverge. It isn't clear whether Currey requested, or Forest Service personnel suggested, that he cut and section the tree in lieu of being able to core it. There is also some uncertainty as to why a core sample couldn't be obtained. One version has it that he broke or lodged his only long increment borer and couldn't obtain another before the end of the field season, another claims he broke two of them, while another implies that a core sample was too difficult to obtain and also wouldn't provide as much definitive information as a full cross section of the tree would .
In addition, there are conflicting views over the uniqueness of Prometheus in the Wheeler Peak grove. It is reported that Currey and/or the Forest Service personnel who authorized the cutting believed the tree was just one of many large, very old trees in the grove, while others, at least one of whom was involved in the decision-making and tree cutting, believe that the tree was clearly unique — obviously older than other trees in the area. At least one person involved says that Currey knew this to be true at the time, although there's no known admission from Currey himself that he knew this, and others have disputed that the tree was obviously older than others . There had been a movement to protect the mountain and contiguous areas in a national park before the tree was cut, and 22 years after the incident the area did gain national park status.
The exact location of the now-oldest tree, Methuselah, is kept secret by the administering agency, the U.S. Forest Service. Because of the importance of the species in dendrochronological research, all bristlecone pines, standing or down, are now protected.

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