ANCIENT GREEN KEEPS FUTURE GREEN
The oldest living plant life on Earth -- trees, mosses, lichens, and other botanica that have stayed green for thousands of years -- are astonishingly beautiful and awe-inspiring. They also offer wisdom and guidance for the future health of our planet.
Brooklyn-based artist Rachel Sussman has created an impressive body of photographs which documents the strength, beauty and wonder of these ancient green giants.
Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is a not-for-profit organization that clones ancient trees and plants them to create new “ancient’ forests that are better equipped than new-growth forests to survive the threats of climate change.
There is science behind these works. There is impact they both seek. They both hope to raise awareness and inspire action to help save our beautiful green and blue planet.
We present their ongoing work and missions below. Check out the incredible green beauty of the world’s oldest living things -- they grow more beautiful as time passes.
Photographer Rachel Sussman takes portraits of the world's oldest continuously living organisms -- alive for at least 2,000 years.
Researching and collaborating with biologists, Sussman has photographed ancient green life from Antarctica to the Mojave desert.
Llareta, for example are dense tiny flowering evergreen plants that grow in the Puna grasslands of the Andes in Peru, Bolivia, the north of Chile and the west of Argentina at between 3,200 and 4,500 metres altitude. They grow super-slowly, at about 1.5 centimeters annually and can live for over 3,000 years.
Many of these ancients are trees, such as Pando. Although it appears to be a grove of many trees, Pando is the clonal colony of a single male aspen in the Fishlake National Forest in south central Utah.
Also known as “Trembling Giant,” this tree has been alive for over 80,000 years. Its underground root system has grown to a mind-boggling mass, with an estimated weight of 6,000,000 kg (6,600 short tons), making it the heaviest known organism.
While most of these organisms are plants, this ancient “club” also includes brain coral found in the Caribbean. Sussman travels the world, often to remote places, from Antarctica to Greenland, to find her subjects. She researches and collaborates with biologists to identify and date them.
These ancient (mostly) green lifeforms live on every continent. They tend to grow very slowly. Greenlandic lichens, for example, grow only one centimeter a century. They are important markers of the history of our planet.
They’ve also served to help shape our our environment. Stromatolites, in Australia, for example, are primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth.
While they have survived for millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Some of Sussman’s subjects, including an underground forest in Pretoria, South Africa, which lived for over 13,000 years, have recently died.
Rachel Sussman was named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow. Check out her powerful story and photos in this self-narrated video. And watch Sussman’s TED Talk, a dramatic narrative about her adventures, discoveries, and and process.
And check out “The Oldest Living Things in the World,” Sussman’s new book. It includes a collection of 124 photographs, 30 essays, and fascinating infographics -- with forewords by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Carl Zimmer. (University of Chicago Press. 2014)
Read more about Blue Green Beauty all this week on BeautifulNow. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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