Peaceful Trees

I met (and listened to) a Christian Palestinian who has a farm in the West Bank.  Facing the challenges of  continuous conflict, he acts in peace trying to bring people to live amicably together.  Olive trees are one of the plants he harvests - purposely. Christianity views the olive tree as a symbol of peace since a dove brought an olive branch to Noah to show the flood was over.  In Ancient Greece the olive tree was considered holy and people were punished for cutting them down.  Somehow the olive tree has survived the endless conflict in the region and man's destructive behavior.

It is believed that the oldest olive tree in the world is growing in Western Crete in the village of Pano Vouves, this incredible tree is thought to be 3000 to 5000 year old and the perimeter of the trunk is 12m! A branch from this tree was used in the opening ceremony at the Olympics! While not considered the oldest tree in the world, it ranks right up with the Sequoia's in the list of the top 50 oldest trees.  You can check out the pictures of some of the other oldest trees in the March 17,2010 Wired Science article.

Source: Museum of Vouves Website

Clonal trees are considered the oldest trees, yet they have no individual tree trunk. Above ground they look like individual trees but below ground they are interconnected and are all clones of the same plant.  The oldest of these, the Quaking Aspen, is estimated at greater than 80,000 years. 

Maybe the Clonal trees have the answer to living in peace to an old age - stay peacefully interconnected together.