What is the oldest tree in Crete?
The oldest tree on Crete whose age nobody argues about is the olive at Azoria, a kilometre south of Kavousi in Lasithi. Ring analysis reported by the municipality of Ierapetra dates its planting to between 1350 and 1100 BCE, which makes it roughly 3,000 to 3,400 years old. The far more famous olive at Ano Vouves, near Chania at the other end of the island, may well be older, but nobody can settle it: ring work published in 1996 gives a floor of at least 2,000 years, while scientists at the University of Crete have estimated 4,000.
Crete's age question is complicated by the fact that olives are close to undateable. They hollow out as they grow old and lose the heartwood that a ring count or a radiocarbon test would need, which is why the island's two great olives arrive with such different kinds of number. The tree at Ano Vouves near Chania has a published floor from ring analysis, at least 2,000 years, and a widely repeated estimate from University of Crete scientists of 4,000, which would make it the oldest living olive known anywhere. English Wikipedia states plainly that its exact age cannot be determined and that no agreed scientific method for dating olives exists. The olive at Azoria near Kavousi, at the eastern end of the island, is the one nobody argues about: ring analysis places its planting between 1350 and 1100 BCE, and municipal and press sources settle on roughly 3,250 years. Crete's two plane trees carry no age at all. The one at Krasi is 24 metres round and the one at Gortyn is evergreen, and neither has been dated, because planes regenerate from the root and a huge base can be renewal rather than one continuous stem.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.