The current record-holders for individual, non-clonal trees are the Great Basin bristlecone pine trees from California and Nevada , in the United States . Through tree-ring cross-referencing, they have been shown to be more than five millennia old.
A clonal colony can survive for much longer than an individual tree. A colony of 47,000 quaking aspen trees (nicknamed "Pando "), covering 106 acres (43 ha) in the Fishlake National Forest of Utah, is considered one of the oldest and largest organisms in the world. The colony has been estimated to be 80,000 years old, although tree ring samples date individual, above-ground, trees at only an average of about 130 years.
A colony of Huon pine trees covering 2.5 acres (1.0 ha) on Mount Read , Tasmania is estimated to be around 10,000 years old, as determined be DNA samples taken from pollen collected from the sediment of a nearby lake. Individual trees in this group date to no more than 4,000 years old, as determined by tree ring samples.
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