This tree might be the oldest living thing in Europe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/08/19/this-tree-might-be-the-oldest-living-thing-in-europe/

More than a thousand years ago, in the 940s, Europe was a very different place. The Byzantine Empire was at its peak and Vikings sailed the seas. In the midst of it all sat a little sapling, one that would grow into a tree that still thrives today.

According to scientists, a Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece is more than 1,075 years old, making it the oldest single tree known in Europe.

Some caveats here, before you have the chance to email me a "correction": There are many older "trees" in Europe, some of which have lived for nearly 10,000 years. But those trees are clonal, reproducing asexually over and over again throughout history. The individual trees themselves are usually just a few hundred years old, though they're genetically identical to the collectively ancient trees connected to the same root system.

"The tree we have stumbled across is a unique individual," said Stockholm University graduate student Paul J. Krusic, part of the expedition that found the tree. "It cannot rely on a mother plant, or the ability to split or clone itself, to survive. Cloning is a very effective evolutionary survival strategy. It's cool, but it's not the same. It's not the same as you or I being left alone to our own devices and living for 1,000 years, like this tree."

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