Growing high atop Sweden's Fulufajallet Mountain is a Norway Spruce that sure doesn't look like much – except that it's an estimated 9,550 years old and goes by the name of Old Tjikko.
Located in Fulufjallet National Park, Old Tjikko began growing in this harsh tundra shortly after the glaciers receded from Scandinavia at the close of the last ice age. To put that into perspective, this lowly shrub witnessed from afar as humans learned to plow fields, domesticate the cat, and – 2,000 years after it first took root – watched our ancestors begin learning to smelt copper.
Though the tree may have spent millennia as a shrub before the climate warmed enough for it to grow into the spindly hulk we see today, scientists had a hunch Old Tjikko was part of a clonal organism. When setting out to establish the tree's exact age, they carbon dated the roots system beneath the tree itself, revealing what a tiny beast Old Tjikko truly is at heart.
If that isn't enough of an arboreal pep-talk in its own right, perhaps the fact that Old Tjikko was named after discoverer Leif Kullman's dog will do the trick.