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This view is from the center of the King Clone, a creosote bush ring 67' in diameter located in the Mojave Desert near Lucerne Valley, California. The creosote (Larrea tridentata), also known as greasewood, is a common desert plant of the American Southwest & Northern Mexico. In this view it is the only plant seen for miles in the sand.
The King Clone was identified and the age estimated by Frank Vasek, a professor at the University of California, Riverside. After Vasek hypothesized that the creosote ring was, in fact, one organism, Leonel da Silveira Lobo O'Reilly Sternberg (then a graduate student working in Vasek's lab), documented that plants within a ring had more similar characteristics than those from other plant clusters. Vasek then used two methods to estimate the age of the ring. One method counted rings and measured the distance of annual growth, and the other used radiocarbon dating on pieces of wood found in the center of the ring, and measuring their distances from each other and the living bushes. The two dating methods yielded similar results (age about 11,700 years), thus making it one of the oldest known living organisms on Earth.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Clone
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