What is the oldest tree in Pacific Spirit Park (PSP)? We don’t know exact ages, but if you are looking for old trees, especially big old trees, you would find them on the cliff slope forests of Wreck Beach or in the Ecological Reserve along Sword Fern trail.

The forests of Wreck Beach are one of the last areas of unlogged old-growth in Vancouver. However, being on a cliff slope and near a popular beach means it’s seen a lot of disturbance and invasive species. There are still many old large trees down there, but due to the amount of human activity and landslides it’s likely none are over 300 years old.

The Ecological Reserve along the Sword Fern Trail is the oldest logged part of PSP. Logged in the late 1800s, oxen were used to remove the fallen trees. The forest has now had a hundred years to grow back. It grew in better conditions then the rest of PSP, which was logged more recently with heavy machinery. In the Ecological Reserve the trees are likely around 130 years old.

The Ecological Reserve is good example of one of my favourite pieces of knowledge about guessing the age of a forest: The flatter the ground the younger the forest. The more uneven the ground (pits and mounds) the older the forest. This because younger forest have been razed and flatten by logging. Older forests have had more time for ecological disturbances to occur. Specifically large trees falling over, creating pits where their roots have been torn up and mounds where the trunks have fallen and eventually been covered in soil.

The Ecological Reserve is completed covered in pits and mounds. It is bit shocking how fast the ground turns flat as you walk out of the Reserve and deeper into the park! The Reserve is also home to one of last refuges of old Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis), a species that used to cover the Vancouver Mainland but now has vanished.

What is the oldest tree in the world? Most of us tree fans will be quick to answer with the Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) of Eastern California. With a tree known as Methuselah known to be approximately 4,900 years old.  Makes our PSP trees seem incredibly young and paltry in comparison.

Here is where I flip it on you though! What if I told you there is a good chance that there are trees in PSP that are older then 5000 years? When I have been talking dating the ages of trees above, I’ve talking about dating trees via the very individualistic approach of defining/identifying a tree based on it having a single trunk and counting the growth rings on that trunk. Trees don’t work this way though!

There’s a Norway Spruce (Picea abies) in Sweden known as Old Tjikko which has been regenerating itself from its roots for 9,550 years. Trunks have grown and fallen, roots had rotted and died, but new roots and new trunks have grown out of the dying ones. Keeping the tree alive and growing for almost 10,000 years.

There is an Aspen (Populus tremuloides) Forest know as Pando in Utah that is all one organism, i.e. one tree. With 47,000 trunks connected via a single root system that expands 106 acres. It is believed to be up to 12,000 years old.

Some might take issue with talking about these ‘clonal trees’ as individual trees. That having old bodies die and new ones grow, makes it similar to a Ship of Theseus type paradox. That if we were to clone a human, that clone would not be the same person as the original. I would counter by saying that it’s a mistake in the first place to think of plants the same way as we think of humans. Plants don’t have a central processing unit like a brain, heart, or stomach as humans do. They are modular organisms. Us thinking of them in human terms, as individuals, is one of our biggest anthropomorphizing sins and is at the core of plant blindness. They are an alien species to us and require a radical rethink to understand and appreciate how unknowable to us they truly are.

Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) is good candidate for this radical rethink. Our provincial tree and by far the most important tree to indigenous tribes in this region. Vancouver used to be covered with giant redcedars and you can still see remnants of these redcedars in PSP from their large stumps, often called Ghost Stumps. Likely these trunks were thousands of years old when they were logged.

If you look at surrounding recedar trees near these stumps you will sometimes notice that they have a slant to them. trunks that run flat along the ground before bending upwards.

Flat trunk of a redcedar turning into an upward one
Flat trunk of a redcedar turning into an upward one

Often a trunk flat on the ground before curving upwards means the tree was blown over in the wind or another tree fell and flatten it. But sometimes, something magical has happened. This bent tree is actually a branch that was severed and dropped by a larger tree, landed on the ground, put out roots and kept growing.

Recently dropped redcedar branch starting to grow upward
Recently dropped redcedar branch starting to grow upward

This is a common phenomenon in BC old growth forests. Redcedars have a slant because they used to be branches on another tree. You can find lots of small trees like this in PSP. A good indication that this has happened is that the flat trunk along the ground has an almost flat end, which is where it was severed. However, as the tree gets older this part will rot away as new roots closer to the upwards trunk grow, so sometimes it’s impossible to tell.

Redcedar tree with a flat end showing it was once a dropped branch
Redcedar tree with a flat end showing it was once a dropped branch

Let’s think about this for a second. A thousand-year old redcedar tree drops a branch before it is logged. Or maybe the branch is cut off and left there by loggers. The branch puts down roots and starts growing upward. A hundred years later, PSP Park is formed and people hike, bike, and run past this tree, with no conception of the history and weight of years it has.  

Now what if the stump beside our branch-tree was also originally a branch-tree? We could add another couple thousand years on its age. What if the one before that was also a branch-tree? We can keep going! A part of what makes this thought experiment so much fun is realizing we have no way of knowing, every redcedar tree we walk past could be an ancient forest god.

Other trees in PSP also have this ‘clonal immortality’. Big Leaf Maples regrow and sprout from stumps and roots. Vine Maples grow sideways through the forest chasing openings of sun and put out roots where their trunks touch the ground. Black Cottonwoods are famous for reshaping rivers by dropping branches, which wash ashore downstream and grow quickly into massive behemoths, causing the river to bend around them.

So next time you are in PSP keep an eye on the ground! Find yourself an ancient cedar.

For more information on big old trees in PSP I highly recommend reading Ira Sutherland’s Vancouver Big Tree Hiking Guide.

I will be doing a ecowalk on identifying these branch-tree cedars in the future. Please subscribe to our Newsletter for updates about the date and time of this walk and other events.