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Taken from an article in The Leader newspaper issue of November 13, 1980:
Creosote Bush May be Oldest Organism
"The earth's oldest living organism may be the scraggly creosote bush, according to an article by Janet White which appeared in the November 11 issue of the U.C. Clip Sheet, a weekly newspaper published by the University of California. Writes White'; 'University of California botanist Frank Vasek has shown that creosote bushes growing in circular clusters are direct offshoots or 'clones' of a single individual. Some may be more than 10,000 years old, twice the age of the fabled bristlecone pine and three times that of the massive redwood trees, previously thought to be the world's oldest living things.

A scrawny plant that appears to suffer a slow starvation on the desert floor, the creosote is, in fact, a champion of survival according to Vasek's findings published in the 'American Journal of Botany.'

'The oldest we found, dubbed King Clone, is 11,700 years old by our estimates,' Vasek said. ' We believe it was one of the first life forms to colonize the Mojave Desert when the last glacier receded, and has been a continuous resident there ever since.'

Creosote, which gives off a distinctive tar-like scent after a rain, has been hiding its longevity 'in plain sight,' Vasek said. Its meager aspect is so commonplace that rings of creosote are routinely overlooked by desert watchers and scientists alike.

A reporter's question in 1974 first drew Vasek's attention to the mystery of creosote's age.

Vasek was the first to see a ring of separate creosote bushes as all part of the same living thing. He theorized that the entire distance to the center of the creosote ring was at one time solid wood, the outer ring of bushes comparable with the outer layer of living bark on a redwood tree.

But proving his theory became a detective story, because the inside wood and therefore the growth record, had long since rotted away. Vasek had to determine if all the bushes in a ring were genetically the same. If they were, the age of that single individual could be estimated by the rate of growth of the plant outward from the center.

Leonel Sternberg, a botanist then working as a graduate student in Vasek's lab, was able to 'fingerprint' bushes. He used a test involving plant enzymes to show that plants in a ring had identical characteristics but always differed from other plant clusters. Vasek measured the growth rate two ways, getting similar results. One was by counting growth rings in existing bushes -- which like trees add one ring a year -- and measuring the distance of annual growth. The second was radiocarbon dating of wood chunks excavated from the center of the rings, and measuring their distance from living bushes.

Both methods showed the creosote grew about 0.7 millimeters (1/3 inch) per year."

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