In an exciting discovery in the Jurupa Mountains of southern California, researchers have found what they believe to be the oldest plant in the state as well as one of the oldest in the world.

The tree is located growing amidst a grouping of boulders atop a hill in the Jurupa Mountains that has sheltered the tree from the strong winds in the area.

At first, the tree was believed to be a thicket of oak trees growing among the boulders but it has been determined that it is actually one tree, a Palmer’s oak, and is estimated to be more than 13,000 years old.

Jeffery Ross-Ibarra, a researcher from the Davis campus of the University of California, and his team discovered the tree around 10 years ago in a survey of local flora. They began studying the tree and its 70 stems, curious about the ‘grove’ of isolated trees, finding it odd that the trees did not reproduce.

Suspecting that the tree had ‘cloned’ itself, they began to analyze the tree on a genetic level and discovered that each of the stems was identical genetically, revealing that it is just one plant that measures 75 feet long by 24 feet wide.

Estimates of the age of the Jurupa Oak, as they are calling it, are calculated on a growth rate per year of 1/20th of an inch and estimate the age at somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 years.