There is this fig tree with recorded history of planting date. Hence, it is known to have lived for about 400 years. People trim its branches and rejuvenated branches grow. If this process continues no one knows how much longer it will live. We also read that there are trees that have lived until now 4000-10000 years. So can we say trees are inherently immortal?
Any plant that reproduces from clones, like the sump-sprouting Coast Redwoods in California or the clone ring-forming Creosote bushes in the Mojave desert, the clone forming Quaking aspen in Utah that is both one of the oldest individual organisms but also the largest, covering over 100 acres, and the grasses that only reproduce by underground runner roots instead of seeds, like sweetgrass (Hierochloe) are all essentially immortal, until climate change or geologic changes in the environment do not allow the individual plants to continue to live on that spot.
I wouldn't say that all trees are inherently immortal, as many have finite life spans, but I would agree that plants that clone come pretty close to being immortal, barring catastrophic disturbances.
Some suggestional remarks:
1. Individual trees are mortal, as far as I know.
2. As a non-biologist, it seems to me that the ageing mechanism of trees remains to be revealed. However, external causes as moisture, storms and biological attacks like fungi and moulds have their share in the mortality of individual trees.
3. If immortality is defined as the preservation of genetic material, then cloning is an effective way to reach immortality: indeed each cutting bears the genetics of its single parent.
4. Nevertheless: each individual cutting remains mortal.
5. Due to the large variabilty of the genetic material, each indivicual cutting can show to a certain extent individual properties, e.g. two cuttings of the same rose may show differences in flowering periods, thereby responding to biotic and abiotic environmental factors.
6. So, on fore hand, even cuttings cannot be considered as quite identical
P.Van in fact i wasn't asking if plant cuttings/clones would make a single tree's genetic information perpetuate in a way to make it immortal.i am not focusing on the cutting.what i want to ask is do trees die physiologically just due to long age or they do die of environmental factors?i am sure annuals are programmed to die physiologically within a year or so
Dear Fissela Belay,
1. As far as I know, individual trees are mortal, also in case environmental factors can be excluded.
2. As far as I know as a non-biologist, living organisms show a life trajectory of germination, youth and growth, maturity and decay.
3. It seems to me an unreasonable assumption to exclude individual trees from this general rule,
4. However, cloning on the spot may result in the ongoing presence of younger shoots that carry on the original tree, like the examples (Redwoods!) reported by Graig Dremann.
5. As far as I know, individual cuttings remain mortal, so when isolating a cloned tree, I would not dare to predict immortality of such a tree.
Trees have growth, reproduction and survival phases of their lives like other organisms. Some seem to die of "old age" much like other organisms. When they get very tall, it gets more difficult to maintain their vascular structures due to the path length of their sieve tubes and the force of gravity. They also show reduced "vigor" or photosynthesis and growth. I wouldn't say that trees in general are immortal, but there may be some species that could be, given very stable environmental conditions.
This question is very interesting under many aspects, and I think that the essential one has been answered, but I would like to draw attention to one more aspect. The vegetative meristems auto replication allow plants to pursue immortality, and perhaps some are able to, but not true immortality, because sometime something will finally kill it. We could, so, see meristems as an imperfect form to seek for immortality. But when a meristem transforms itself in a flower it looses its auto replication power, so that the mother plant sacrifices it's chances of immortality so that it can have descendents, pursuing immortality as a species. I really love thinking that it is really altruism, to give it's own life to the benefit of the species.
I once read that the cost of reproduction is death. Now we're getting very philosophical though.
Trees do not die 'physiologically'. The vegetative meristems provide them a path to immortality. Of course fungi infections, mechanical damage or some other disadvantageous factor (i.a. prolonged drought) may end their life, but if the conditions are very favorable, trees are able to grow endlessly.
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