Pando
estimated thousands of years (a single precise figure is disputed)Quaking Aspenpin approximate
Pando is not a tree. It is one quaking aspen: a single organism of roughly 40,000 stems sharing one root system across about 106 acres, commonly reckoned the most massive known living thing on Earth. Every stem is genetically identical, which is why the whole hillside changes colour in the same week each autumn, and why the trunks you walk between are closer to branches than to neighbours. Its age is a live argument rather than a rounded number. The popular figure is 80,000 years, derived from an assumed rate of spread. Other researchers put it anywhere from several hundred to about 14,000, and the disagreement is about method rather than about Pando. Nobody has settled it and we are not going to tidy it here. What is documented is that the clone is failing to replace itself: deer and cattle eat the young stems before they clear browsing height, so an organism of that age currently consists mostly of old wood, and the Forest Service manages it with that in mind. The Old Spanish Trailhead sits on Highway 25 by Fish Lake, free, no permit, and a flat 1.4 mile walk out and back goes straight into the clone. There is no single trunk to stand in front of and no way to see the whole of it at once. That is the thing you have come for.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. No public transit; nearest town is Richfield, UT, about 25 minutes' drive.
The pin marks the right spot roughly, not the tree itself. It stands here, but we have not confirmed the precise position on the ground yet. Know exactly where it is?
- Species
- Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)
- Age estimate
- estimated thousands of years (a single precise figure is disputed)
- Location
- Old Spanish Trailhead, Highway 25 (Fishlake Scenic Byway), Fishlake National Forest, near Fish Lake, Utah (the Old Spanish Trailhead parking area, where the Lakeshore National Recreation Trail runs a spur directly through the Pando clone)
- Access
- Free, US Forest Service land, no permit needed; a flat, easy 1.4-mile out-and-back trail from the Old Spanish Trailhead walks directly through the clone, and a further overlook is reachable via the Lakeshore National Recreation Trail off Forest Road 046N.
- Getting there
- No public transit; nearest town is Richfield, UT, about 25 minutes' drive.
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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