High in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California lives the world’s oldest organism – a gnarled and twisted bristlecone pine. Known as Methuselah, it is recognised as the non-clonal tree with the greatest confirmed age in the world, pre-dating even the great pyramids of Giza.

At 4,852 years old, the old pine is named after a character in the bible with the same name, who was said to have lived the longest. So, what’s the secret to defying death? It turns out that the bristlecone pine possesses advanced survival strategies that make less resilient plants green with envy. These evolutionary abilities aid the tree to cope with even the harshest environments on the planet.