Ranking the oldest trees on Earth sounds simple until you try it. Three very different things get called the world's oldest tree: single trees whose rings can be counted, clonal colonies whose roots outlive thousands of individual trunks, and celebrated giants whose famous ages come from folklore rather than measurement. Mixing them produces a list that cannot honestly be put in order at all, so this countdown takes the strictest of the three. Every tree below is a single, living, non-clonal organism whose age has been established by a method someone else can check — crossdated tree rings, radiocarbon dating, or a written planting record. They are ranked oldest first, and every age is a minimum: each tree is at least this old. Trees that are no longer alive are not eligible, however celebrated, which is why several of the most famous record-holders are missing; the FAQ explains where they went.
12 Oldest Trees in the World (2026)
The record The oldest tree in the world is Methuselah, in the United States — 4,850 years, age. Source: RMTRR OLDLIST (crossdated). Verified .
Oldest Trees in the World The Ranking at a Glance
Fun Facts About the World's Oldest Trees
- Methuselah was already centuries old when work began on the Great Pyramid of Giza, and it is still putting out needles today.
- Only one tree here has a written birthday: the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi was planted in 288 BC, a date preserved in Sri Lankan chronicles rather than read from rings.
- The oldest tree ever dated is no longer standing — Prometheus, a Nevada bristlecone of roughly 4,900 years, was cut down in 1964 during a research sampling that went wrong.
- Older living things exist, but none of them is a single tree — Utah's Pando aspen colony shares one vast root system among tens of thousands of separate trunks.
- Two entries could not be dated by counting rings at all. Baobabs do not reliably form them and Jomon Sugi's core has rotted away, so both were dated by radiocarbon instead.
1. Methuselah
At 4,850 years, Methuselah is the oldest single living tree that anyone has dated ring by ring. It is a Great Basin bristlecone pine high in the White Mountains of eastern California, on a dry, pale ridge where the soil is so poor and the growing season so short that almost nothing else takes hold. That hardship is the point: bristlecones grow densely and slowly, and the resulting wood is so resinous that it resists rot, insects and fire for millennia.
You cannot be shown which tree it is. The US Forest Service keeps Methuselah unmarked among the other ancient pines of the Schulman Grove, after an older bristlecone known as Prometheus was cut down in 1964 during a research sampling that went wrong. Visitors walk the grove's trail past trees of the same generation without ever being told which one holds the record, and that anonymity has since become standard practice for the oldest trees on Earth.
2. Gran Abuelo
At 3,622 years, Gran Abuelo is the oldest verified living tree outside North America and the oldest known alerce, a Patagonian cypress that grows in the wet coastal forests of southern Chile. Its trunk is a hollowing, moss-draped column standing in a ravine in Alerce Costero National Park, reached by a boardwalk that exists largely to keep feet off its roots.
It is also the centre of the liveliest dispute in the field. In 2022 a Chilean researcher modelled the tree's full age at around 5,484 years, which would place it well ahead of Methuselah — but the core sample reached only about 40 percent of the way to the centre, and the remainder was estimated statistically rather than counted. Dendrochronologists generally hold that a record needs every ring, so the crossdated figure is used here and the larger number is treated as an open question rather than a result.
3. Black River Bald Cypress (BLK227)
At 2,624 years, the bald cypress catalogued as BLK227 is the oldest verified living tree in eastern North America. It stands in Three Sisters Swamp, a stretch of the Black River in southeastern North Carolina where the water runs tea-brown with tannins and the cypresses rise straight out of it on flared, buttressed trunks.
Its age only came to light in 2019, when researchers coring trees along the river found several far older than anyone had assumed — evidence that genuinely ancient forest survives in a landscape most people drive past without noticing. The swamp is reached by paddle rather than trail, the individual trees are not signposted, and the Nature Conservancy protects the stretch of river they grow in.
4. Colorado Bristlecone Pine (CB-90-11)
At 2,435 years, the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine logged as CB-90-11 is the oldest known example of its species, a high-altitude cousin of the White Mountains pines growing in central Colorado. Rocky Mountain bristlecones are the easiest of the ancient pines to recognise up close: their needles are flecked with white specks of resin, as though someone had dusted them with sugar.
Trees like this one survive by dying slowly and in pieces. A bristlecone at this age is mostly bare, silvered deadwood, with life continuing along a narrow ribbon of living bark connecting a few roots to a few branches — an arrangement that lets the tree shed most of itself through centuries of drought and carry on. It carries no name and no trail, which is typical of the specimens that quietly define these records.
5. Delingha Qilian Juniper
At 2,230 years, an unnamed Qilian juniper near Delingha is the oldest verified living tree in Asia. It grows in Qinghai Province on the north-eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, in high, cold, arid country — the same combination of altitude and aridity that produces extreme old age in the mountains of the American West.
Junipers of this species have become as valuable to science as to the record books. Because they lay down clear annual rings and live for millennia, researchers have used them to build long climate histories for the plateau, reading drought and monsoon strength back across more than two thousand years. The tree is a data archive as much as a survivor.
6. Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi
At 2,217 years, the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura is the oldest living tree in the world with a recorded planting date. It is a sacred fig, grown from a cutting of the tree at Bodh Gaya under which the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, and it was planted in 288 BC — a date preserved in Sri Lankan chronicles rather than inferred from rings.
That written lineage makes it unusual here: almost every other entry was dated by laboratory work, while this one has simply been recorded and tended without a break for more than two millennia. The tree stands on a terraced platform in the sacred city of Anuradhapura, a UNESCO World Heritage site, ringed by gold railings and propped where its limbs need support. It remains one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the country.
7. Northern California Coast Redwood
At 2,200 years, the oldest dated coast redwood brings a very different kind of tree into a list otherwise dominated by gnarled, slow-growing conifers of dry mountains. Redwoods are the opposite sort of survivor: they grow fast and enormous in the fog belt of northern California, and the oldest individuals are also among the tallest living things on Earth.
Their longevity comes from chemistry and bulk rather than hardship. Redwood heartwood is rich in tannins that deter insects and fungal decay, and the thick, fibrous bark of a mature tree insulates it against the fires that periodically sweep the coast ranges. This particular tree's age was established by counting rings rather than by full crossdating, so it is recorded as a reliable count rather than a laboratory-verified maximum.
8. Jomon Sugi
At 2,170 years, Jomon Sugi is the oldest verified living tree in Japan and the great prize of Yakushima, a rain-drenched island of granite peaks and moss forest south of Kyushu. It is a sugi, or Japanese cedar, with a squat, immensely thick trunk that looks less like a tree than a piece of weathered rock that happens to have branches.
Its age is a floor rather than a measurement, and deliberately so. The core of the trunk has rotted away, which makes a complete ring count impossible, so radiocarbon dating of the surviving wood establishes a minimum of roughly 2,170 years, while looser estimates that circulated for decades ran to several thousand. Reaching it takes a long day's walk along an old logging railway and up a steep forest trail, ending at a viewing deck built to keep boots off the roots.
9. Bennett Juniper
At 2,164 years, the Bennett Juniper is the oldest known living juniper in North America and, unlike most trees at this end of the list, one you can walk up to. It stands alone in a meadow in the Stanislaus National Forest in California's central Sierra Nevada: a massive, broken-topped Sierra juniper whose trunk is far thicker than its modest height leads you to expect.
Its precise age is genuinely uncertain, and openly so. The wood at the centre of the trunk has decayed, so the crossdated portion gives a firm figure of 2,164 years while some records list a rounder 2,200 that includes an estimated component for the missing core. The tree sits on a small protected property maintained specifically for it, one of very few ancient trees anywhere given that kind of individual attention.
10. Sierra Nevada Foxtail Pine (SHP7)
At 2,110 years, the foxtail pine recorded as SHP7 is the oldest known member of a species most visitors to the Sierra Nevada never knowingly see. Foxtail pines grow in just two separated pockets of California — the southern Sierra and the Klamath mountains far to the north — up at the tree line, where dense needle clusters give the branches the bottlebrush look the name describes.
They are close relatives of the bristlecones and survive by the same logic: slow growth, dense resinous wood, and an exposed, rocky position with too little soil and fuel for competitors or fire to reach them. SHP7 grows among high southern Sierra stands that dendrochronologists have sampled for decades to extend California's climate record.
11. Xangongo Baobab (XG-1)
At 2,100 years, the baobab catalogued as XG-1 is the oldest living baobab yet dated and the oldest verified living tree in Africa. It grows in the Xangongo grove in Cunene Province, southern Angola, and it is nothing like the mountain conifers that dominate this list: a vast, smooth-barked, bottle-shaped trunk that stores water through long dry seasons beneath a comparatively sparse crown.
Baobabs cannot be dated by counting rings, because they do not reliably produce them; their ages come instead from radiocarbon dating of samples taken at several points around the trunk. XG-1's published age is 2,100 years give or take about fifty, which means it and the 2,095-year-old cypress ranked just below are statistically indistinguishable — the order between them reflects the central estimates, not a decisive gap. It is also the newest measurement on this list, published in 2025.
12. Black River Bald Cypress (BLK232)
At 2,095 years, a second Black River bald cypress — catalogued as BLK232 — closes the list, growing within sight of the older tree ranked nine places above it. Finding two trees past two thousand years old in the same short stretch of river is the real story here: Three Sisters Swamp is not one ancient survivor but a stand of them.
Bald cypresses manage this in conditions that would kill most trees. They stand in slow, acidic blackwater, breathing through the knobbly 'knees' that project above the surface, and the same waterlogged ground that starves their roots of oxygen also keeps out fire and most timber harvesting. The swamp was logged around its edges for centuries while these trees — awkward to reach, often hollow, and commercially worthless — were left exactly where they stood.
FAQ: The World's Oldest Trees
What is the oldest tree in the world?
Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine in California's White Mountains, at roughly 4,850 years. It is the oldest single living tree whose age has been confirmed by crossdating its growth rings. Its exact location is kept secret by the US Forest Service, so visitors walking the grove are never told which tree it is.
Isn't there a tree older than Methuselah?
Guinness World Records lists an unnamed bristlecone pine of about 5,074 years. It is not included here because the core sample behind that age was never located after the researcher who dated it died in 2013, and nobody has identified the tree since, so the figure cannot be independently checked by anyone else.
What about Pando and Old Tjikko?
Both are clonal colonies rather than individual trees. Pando is an aspen root system in Utah estimated at many thousands of years old, and Old Tjikko is a Swedish spruce whose roots long predate its visible trunk. Their genetic lineages outlast this entire list, but no single stem of either does.
Why are the famous ancient yews and olive trees missing?
Their celebrated ages are estimates rather than measurements. Yews, olives and old cypresses hollow out as they age, destroying the inner rings, so widely quoted figures such as the Llangernyw Yew's 4,000 to 5,000 years are extrapolated from girth and growth rate. This list ranks only trees whose ages can be independently verified.
Can you visit the world's oldest trees?
Some of them, though rarely the exact tree. Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, Jomon Sugi and the Bennett Juniper can all be visited directly. Methuselah, the Black River cypresses and most laboratory-catalogued specimens are deliberately unmarked or unpublished, a policy adopted after ancient trees were damaged by vandalism and heavy foot traffic.
Planning more of your trip? Keep exploring more world record-breakers.