Some were already old when the pyramids were new. Counting down to one organism that may have been growing since the last ice age.
Around 2,200 years old and the largest tree on Earth by volume: 1,487 cubic metres of wood. Age is not what makes it famous — sheer bulk is.
This Yakushima cedar is at least 2,170 years old, and some estimates run far higher. It survived logging only because its twisted trunk was useless as timber.
Estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 years. Its heartwood rotted away centuries ago, so the tree is now a ring of separate stems that were once one trunk.
Roughly 4,000 years old and 25 metres tall. It is a national monument, and local tradition holds that the tree was planted in the age of Zoroaster.
Estimated at 4,000 years or more, growing in a village churchyard. The church was built around it — the tree was already ancient when the walls went up.
A bristlecone pine dated by ring count to about 4,850 years. Its exact location in the White Mountains is kept secret to protect it from vandalism.
A Patagonian cypress whose rings and modelling suggest around 5,400 years. If confirmed, it would take the crown for oldest individual tree.
The visible spruce is only a few centuries old, but its root system is dated at about 9,550 years. The trunk dies and regrows; the roots never stop.
It looks like a forest of 47,000 aspens. It is one organism sharing one root system, weighing 6,000 tonnes, with age estimates running into the thousands.
Every tree on this list was alive before the alphabet was invented. Most are still adding rings this year.