Poll: Eternal Life.

[Bluntknife]

I've wondered about this for quite a long time.
If you were to put a tree in the perfect conditions with ample nutrients and no polution.
Would it live forever?

 

[Inverse Skies]

Nope - ageing is a fact of natural selection. We're programmed to age because it increases the amount of genetic variability in the gene pool if a species is constantly being forced to reproduce itself and pass of it's genes in order to continue the species.

Interestingly, asexual creatures do not age as sexually reproducing ones do. Seeing as a tree is a sexually reproducing individual, it will age and it will die, as it is programmed to do.

 

[SmilingKitsune]

Sadly no, unless they're Treebeard.

 

[iain62a]

Sadly no, unless they're Treebeard.

Even ents die of old age, eventually.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Trees can never live forever, but they DO live for an awfully long time. That is, if somebody doesn't cut them down.

 

[SmilingKitsune]

Sadly no, unless they're Treebeard.

Even ents die of old age, eventually.

No I'm pretty sure they're imortal, the only reason the ents are fading away is because they lost all the femal ents, Treebeard's been around forever, I think.

 

[iain62a]

Sadly no, unless they're Treebeard.

Even ents die of old age, eventually.

No I'm pretty sure they're imortal, the only reason the ents are fading away is because they lost all the female ents, Treebeard's been around forever, I think.

I'm sure I read somewhere that they weren't actually immortal, just that they could live for ages(literally, ages). I think I read it in one of the books.

 

[Biek]

THis makes me wonder, whats the oldest documented tree in the world?

edit:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080414-oldest-tree.html
thank you, google

So this one has been growing for almost 10,000 years. Apparently.

 

[SmilingKitsune]

Sadly no, unless they're Treebeard.

Even ents die of old age, eventually.

No I'm pretty sure they're imortal, the only reason the ents are fading away is because they lost all the female ents, Treebeard's been around forever, I think.

I'm sure I read somewhere that they weren't actually immortal, just that they could live for ages(literally, ages). I think I read it in one of the books.

I stand corrected, been a while since I readthe books, oh well they live a veerry looong time any way.