By Michael Reilly
updated 27 minutes ago
At the top of a small hill in suburban southern California, there is what appears to be a thicket of stunted, gnarled oak trees wedged between a pile of boulders. A passerby would likely miss this ancient, biological wonder.
The entire grove of trunks is in fact one plant, a newly discovered Palmer's oak (Quercus palmeri) that researchers estimate is over 13,000 years old, making it one of the oldest plants on Earth.
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At first glance, the scientists thought it was an isolated grove of trees, but something didn't add up: None of them produced fertile acorns, so the plants couldn't reproduce.
The trees were a little too similar in appearance, too — almost like identical twins. And Palmer's oaks typically don't grow in the hot, parched environs of Riverside County.
The team began to suspect they were looking at a clone.
Genetic analysis confirmed their suspicion. Each of the 70 stems are genetically identical; they are the same plant, currently growing in an oval 25 yards long and 8 yards wide.
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I would say that if they are "the same plant", they are not clones, and vice versa. A clone might start out as part of another organism, but it would not become a clone until it separated enough to be a separate organism.
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