Do trees age ?

Question

Trees and plants never seem to age - they just grow. Many are 100s years old. Perhaps scientific lessons can be drawn for humans / animals?

Answer 1

Yes... you can tell how they age too by the amount of rings in the trunk.... if you were to chop down a tree and count its rings you would be able to tell how old it was.

As for the actual signs of "old age" it varies from each type of tree... my Grandad had an apple tree for years and finally a couple of years ago it started to rot and grow less and less fruit.

As it forked into 2 anyway, he was able to rescue half of the tree... but the part left standing also looks old and also does not bear much fruit.

As for oaks which I know can live to be 100s of years old, the only sign I can think of is the roots pushing through the ground...

I'm interested now to look in my local library and find books on the subject as I'd like to know about other signs (than simple decay) that there are :-)

Answer 2

Besides the obvious answer that they do, in fact, get older, the reason that trees do not suffer the same sort of ill-effects from aging that humans and other animals do lies in genetics.

Human (non cancer and non stem cell) cells have a limited number of times they can divide before the cell can no longer reproduce itself. When cells first differentiate from stem cells, they start with a limited number of atom chains on the end I'll call tickets. Every time the cell divides, it removes one ticket from the core. When a cell has no more tickets, it can't divide again.

Essentially, old age is a result of our body just shutting down due to less and less of our cells replacing themselves as they die off.

For animals, there are distinct species advantages to aging. The shorter the timeframe a species has between generations, the more rapid evolution will occur on a given species. If organisms did not age, there would be little species diversity in competitive enivronments. For example, King Big can have 500 children. If King Big never ages, presumably he can hold onto the King Big title for generations. The gene pool becomes saturated with King Big genes because King Big can remove competition before it ever has a chance to get started. If King Big ages, there is constant competition for King Big's spot in the sexual heirarchy, and diversity in the species has a better chance of being maintained.

Now take a look at trees. In a forest, the biggest tree (regardless of species) is the winner. It gets to reproduce. If it were to age and die, it would necessarily die small. Trees that come from species that don't die off from age have a huge advantage - they'll be taking all the sun and choking off growth for fast-dying short generation trees.

Anyhow, humans don't like the fact that they age and die even if it does help the species, so we are working on a cure for aging. Stem cell research - looking at cells that have the capability to divide infinately as opposed to a finite number of times, will most likely be what allows individuals to live without dying of old age.

Answer 3

Just have to look close and count the rings. Some good growing years the rings are larger than others and tend to be closer together during drought seasons as the tree didn't grow much during this period. Ring reading is not precise so you may be off a few years, give or take a few weeks.

Answer 4

If a tree is chopped down you will find it has different shaded rings right through it...each ring represents a year of its life so the age of a tree can be ascertained from the rings.
Best wishes, Mike.

Answer 5

yes they age
every year of growth gives them an additional girth
the lines in the wood show how many years the tree had lived
so if you chop a tree down(hope u dont) you will so in its trunk lots of circles
each one is a years growth some are thicker than others which shows a good year int erms of sunlight and there fore deposit of food in form of starch

Answer 6

Yeah trees do age

Answer 7

Yes
They grow so they age

Answer 8

Of course they do and eventually they die. They add a growth ring for every year of life. They just don't show they same signs of aging that we might.

Answer 9

i'll tell you what if you cut down a tree and you will see that how ever many rings it has thats how old it is

Answer 10

Yes they do age its called growing.