An alerce tree with an estimated age of 3500 - 6000 years.
In a valley in the Alerce Costero National Park in southern Chile, a trunk rises above the canopy like a cliff-face; craggy, rivuleted, with lichen growing in the cracks, Gran Abuelo stands among a forest of younger relatives. Originally thought to be around 3500 years old, a recent study has possibly pushed that age back by 2000 years, making it one of the oldest non-clonal trees in the world.
Gran Abuelo is an alerce tree. Alerce- or fitzroya- is an evergreen in the cypress family, with fine, feather-like leaves and small, delicate cones. It is the largest tree species in South America. Alerce was extensively logged, burned, and cleared during the Spanish colonization of Chile under the brutal encomienda system (and even used as a currency, for a time), and therefore little is known about the species' upper lifespan. It is possible that Gran Abuelo is not an outlier, but is rather simply still here where its brothers are not.
Regardless, alerce wood has been used by humans for tools for at least 13,000 years, meaning that even taking the middle-lifespan estimate of 4500 years, Gran Abuelo could be only a 3rd-generation alerce living alongside humans. Its great grandfather may have been the first to see a section of alerce wood become a tool in a person's hand.