Trees Can Live Forever
7/3/2025
Trees can live forever - this is one of my favorite facts to share with people!
Trees are generating organisms, whereas we are regenerating organisms. While we regenerate new cell tissues in old places, trees generate new cells in new places.
You've noticed that trees get bigger, yes? This is exactly what I mean!
Trees grow at their edges, taking up more and more space around them, and are designed to do so, infinitely!
Branches finish each year by building buds at their ends. Inside these buds are next year's new twigs, complete with leaves and compressed to microscopic form. If you go out in fall and nab one of these buds, dissect it with a sharp razor and look at it under a microscope, you'll see next year's new growth packed in dense insulation. You can count the leaves and see their veins - it's pretty rad!
Come spring, these buds will open, cells will divide and elongate; the new twigs extend outward and leaves will unfurl. We call this a tree's primary growth.
Secondary growth, takes place inside each stem. In aboveground parts, we know these as growth rings. Every year, in every part of a tree, a new layer of tissue is formed at the outermost edge. This is the new conductive and living tissue. Over time, the older growth rings become non-conductive tissue. They become artifact, a story of times past if you read the language.
So, we can summarize all of this by saying trees get longer and wider.
As a Master Arborist with two decades of serving tree owners and managers, I can't tell you how many times each year I get to chuckle at someone pronouncing to me, seemingly annoyed, that their tree "just won't stop growing!"
Trees work all growing season long to perform these growth functions, along with reproduction. But growth, takes up the majority of their energy allotment.
You see, when we're fifty years old, barring any major transplant operations, we will have fifty year old lungs, kidneys, hearts, and vascular tissue. A fifty year old tree, however, has generated brand new vascular tissue throughout all of its parts. And a tree will continue to do this, perennially, until its access to available resources is impeded or disrupted.
Trees can live forever - this is one of my favorite facts to share with people!
Trees are generating organisms, whereas we are regenerating organisms. While we regenerate new cell tissues in old places, trees generate new cells in new places.
You've noticed that trees get bigger, yes? This is exactly what I mean!
Trees grow at their edges, taking up more and more space around them, and are designed to do so, infinitely!
Branches finish each year by building buds at their ends. Inside these buds are next year's new twigs, complete with leaves and compressed to microscopic form. If you go out in fall and nab one of these buds, dissect it with a sharp razor and look at it under a microscope, you'll see next year's new growth packed in dense insulation. You can count the leaves and see their veins - it's pretty rad!
Come spring, these buds will open, cells will divide and elongate; the new twigs extend outward and leaves will unfurl. We call this a tree's primary growth.
Secondary growth, takes place inside each stem. In aboveground parts, we know these as growth rings. Every year, in every part of a tree, a new layer of tissue is formed at the outermost edge. This is the new conductive and living tissue. Over time, the older growth rings become non-conductive tissue. They become artifact, a story of times past if you read the language.
So, we can summarize all of this by saying trees get longer and wider.
As a Master Arborist with two decades of serving tree owners and managers, I can't tell you how many times each year I get to chuckle at someone pronouncing to me, seemingly annoyed, that their tree "just won't stop growing!"
Trees work all growing season long to perform these growth functions, along with reproduction. But growth, takes up the majority of their energy allotment.
You see, when we're fifty years old, barring any major transplant operations, we will have fifty year old lungs, kidneys, hearts, and vascular tissue. A fifty year old tree, however, has generated brand new vascular tissue throughout all of its parts. And a tree will continue to do this, perennially, until its access to available resources is impeded or disrupted.
This is simply not true for us or any other animal. This one fact, separates all animals from plants!
We could ensure that you have access to clean drinking water, nutritious food, sound rest, and are never overburdened with stress - and still, one day, your cells will stop regenerating.
For a tree to die, some external force must act on it, and deny its access to resources!
Beetles must inhabit and chew through a tree's vascular tissue, disrupting the flow of nutrients to and from the roots. Lightning must strike, rapidly increasing the temperature of water inside the stem and bursting cell walls. A deer chews a young sapling, roots cross and girdle a tree's roots, drought decreases internal stem pressure and cellular pathways close behind cavitation.
In most cases, it is a combination of several factors that eventually bring a tree to the end of its living cycle. And in a forest, its use lives on through the decomposition process. But this is another article for a different time.
There's essentially nothing we can do as humans to make a tree grow. We cannot assist in the process of photosynthesis or respiration in any way. Nor do we need to. Trees have been conducting growth processes for hundreds of millions of years. Even fertilization, yet another entire article for a different time, cannot ensure growth.
You've heard the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Well, you can lead nitrogen to a tree, but you can't make it grow sustainably - in fact, it can be quite harmful.
STOP fertilizing trees !!!
Though we can't make a tree grow, we can optimize and conversely, impede access to available resources. That's the entire work of an Arborist in a nutshell...pun intended!
To be an Arborist, to be a tree grower on any scale, is to be a resource manager. That's it!
It's knowing how to monitor soil moisture between watering applications because over-watering is easy to do and can be as harmful as not watering. It's knowing that soil under landscape fabrics depletes itself of oxygen which starves a tree of available nutrients, whereas mulch beds replenish nutrients and oxygen supply.
It's paying attention to what fatal insects may be in the area, or knowing that pruning is wounding and over-pruning is permanent injury.
To be a tree grower is to know that all tree care is proactive. Once we plant a tall species under low power lines or cut critical roots to pave a parking lot, the domino has been tipped!
There is no such thing as retroactive tree care. Tree care, implies planning ahead to preserve and optimize resources.
We could ensure that you have access to clean drinking water, nutritious food, sound rest, and are never overburdened with stress - and still, one day, your cells will stop regenerating.
For a tree to die, some external force must act on it, and deny its access to resources!
Beetles must inhabit and chew through a tree's vascular tissue, disrupting the flow of nutrients to and from the roots. Lightning must strike, rapidly increasing the temperature of water inside the stem and bursting cell walls. A deer chews a young sapling, roots cross and girdle a tree's roots, drought decreases internal stem pressure and cellular pathways close behind cavitation.
In most cases, it is a combination of several factors that eventually bring a tree to the end of its living cycle. And in a forest, its use lives on through the decomposition process. But this is another article for a different time.
There's essentially nothing we can do as humans to make a tree grow. We cannot assist in the process of photosynthesis or respiration in any way. Nor do we need to. Trees have been conducting growth processes for hundreds of millions of years. Even fertilization, yet another entire article for a different time, cannot ensure growth.
You've heard the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Well, you can lead nitrogen to a tree, but you can't make it grow sustainably - in fact, it can be quite harmful.
STOP fertilizing trees !!!
Though we can't make a tree grow, we can optimize and conversely, impede access to available resources. That's the entire work of an Arborist in a nutshell...pun intended!
To be an Arborist, to be a tree grower on any scale, is to be a resource manager. That's it!
It's knowing how to monitor soil moisture between watering applications because over-watering is easy to do and can be as harmful as not watering. It's knowing that soil under landscape fabrics depletes itself of oxygen which starves a tree of available nutrients, whereas mulch beds replenish nutrients and oxygen supply.
It's paying attention to what fatal insects may be in the area, or knowing that pruning is wounding and over-pruning is permanent injury.
To be a tree grower is to know that all tree care is proactive. Once we plant a tall species under low power lines or cut critical roots to pave a parking lot, the domino has been tipped!
There is no such thing as retroactive tree care. Tree care, implies planning ahead to preserve and optimize resources.
So, if you ever hear anyone say that trees have a lifespan, you have my expressed permission to kindly disagree!
The correct statement is that trees can live forever...with access to vital resources!
The correct statement is that trees can live forever...with access to vital resources!
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Author: Nicholas Patterson ISA Board Certified Master Arborist ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualified ISA Certified Tree Worker Climber Specialist Nicholas has twenty years of experience cultivating trees in the urban forests of the Rocky Mountain Region! |