Old Tjikko
By onemorething
- 662 reads
Old Tjikko is a near 10,000 year old tree in Sweden, it's a Norway spruce. It has managed to live so long because it is a clonal tree. Above is a picture of it.
Any Norway spruce has roamed
a long journey northward
since the ice melted;
in an advancement of might,
these pines have scaled mountains.
Though I do not want to live
for 10,000 years, my bark purpled
and lichened with the scars of eternity.
We have no books for the history
that Old Tjikko records: layers
of the past are timbered
into the vessels and fibres
of a slow decay: at first, stunted
by a glacial harshness,
where time does not heal all things -
it is rather the gradual muscling
of endurance, to raise
its own green sail over an ocean
of stone. And these trees
have seen the evolution
of red squirrel and little goldcrest,
creatures who have climbed
the millenia of their ladders
of branches, who now linger
in the spirit of a wood.
Old Tjikko does not have a forest
to break the heavy fall
of thundered rains, as wounded
as a harrowed field, and yet here,
its threadbare soul remains.
Image is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old-Tjikko-2011-07-19-001.jpg#mw-jump-to-license
Also on Twitter: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1872_Schischkin_Pinienwald_anagoria.JPG
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Collier_-_Priestess_of_Bacchus.jpg
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lady_with_a_Squirrel.jpg#mw-jump-to-license
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I'd never heard of clonal
I'd never heard of clonal trees before - and then I didn't understand how this could be one because it was standing alone - then I noticed all the lower, brushwood pieces which I assume form part of the root system? Anyway, thank you Onemore - so interesting - and another wonderful poem which springboards off into something else altogether as the best poems often do
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Survival of the fittest is
Survival of the fittest is how I'd feel if I were this tree. You describe well the fight to sustain life in such harsh conditions.
A poem that possess an enlightment into Old Tjikko.
Thanks for sharing.
Jenny.
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When first I saw the picture
When first I saw the picture I thoght it was a cellphone tower they are an eyesore. Yes but Old Tjikko is very impressive almost as old as those giant redwoods?
All the best! Tom
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