Question: what is the old is plant

Ekbal Hussain answered on 23 Jun 2014:

Hi Townsleyi!

Now that’s a difficult question because it’s hard to tell really. If you are asking about when the first plants came about on our planet then that would be something called stromatolites, which were around about 3 and a half billion years ago. These strange and bizzare plants were basically like giant sponge mounds. They are very very rare nowadays and can be seen only in a few places around the world.

In terms of the oldest tree alive today, well that would be a special kind of pine tree found in California, which is 5,063 years old. The’s older than than the Egyptians!

But if your question was about the oldest living ‘plant’, then that would be a strange kind of giant sea grass found in the Mediterranean Sea. Scientist think some of these grasses are over 200,000 years old! That’s a time when we had woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos! It’s also the time when the first modern humans evolved! So these grasses were around when the first humans came!

Don’t you think that’s pretty cool??

Ekbal