Better to burn bright

摘要

In the Sequoia National Park in central California stands General Sherman, an 8o-metre-tall , redwood. By the time the tree was discovered in the lgth century-and named after an American Civil War hero to guard against logging - General Sherman was already 2000 years old, a nearly unfathomable age by human standards. Yet for a tree, General Sherman is not especially ancient. Some of California's bristlecone pines live more than four millennia. There is also a ring of creosote bushes in the Mojave desert, dubbed King Clone, that one estimate suggests started life as a small shrub nearly 12,000 years ago.