The oldest trees in China and where to find them

Abstract

Extremely old trees are valued and revered by residents in many countries. Yet information about the ages and locations of the oldest living trees is rarely available, especially at the national level. We compiled a series of dendrochronological datasets of the age and location of very old trees (≥1000 years old) across China, and found that there are at least 98 ancient living trees exceeding 1000 years of age in the country. The oldest living individual we identified was a Qilian juniper (Juniperus przewalskii) tree that, as of 2009, was determined to be 2230 years old. The oldest trees occurred most frequently in remote, high‐elevation areas.