"Oldest" bonsai? or a load of BS...just wondering

[shinmai]

I know there is a bristlecone pine in California that has been credited as the oldest living thing on Earth, at 4,855 years. It’s currently being challenged by a Peruvian cypress in Chile, estimated to be 5,500 years old. ‘Estimated’ because its trunk is twelve meters in diameter, and there is no core sampling equipment big enough to reach its center, so the scientist studying it is using mathematical modeling and other measurement techniques. Supposedly his research is being published later this year.

 

[shinmai]

To be precise, both are non-clonal trees.

 

[NaoTK]

Surely in that giant pot or up in the "shin" there would be a 1000 year old fragment of charcoal or something they could radio carbon date...

 

[ShadyStump]

I'm gonna just add 10 - 20 years to each of my tree's and no one should bat an eye

Man, you must really suck at bonsai if that's all you got after 20-30 years.

 

[ShadyStump]

To be precise, both are non-clonal trees.

This I think hints at how the tree in OP may actually be 1000 years old. If it has been in a pot that entire time, there is likely none of the tree left that was originally potted. If there were such things as pics from hundreds of years ago, it would not look like the same tree. A ficus that old would have been restyled so many times over the centuries, it'd be more comparable to cuttings from the same line kept going for a millennium.
That is something I could believe with relative ease. It's very possible that a sacred temple tree was kept going, at least in the eyes of the caretakers, for 1000 years by keeping cuttings. Whether or not you think that counts is up for debate still.

Again, it'd be really nice if they gave some sort of provenance for 1000 claim. Where they got it; the supposed history as it was told them; anything of any detail. That's the suspect part for me. If they had enough story on it to suggest the age claim could possibly be true, that's the sort of thing people want to hear.

 

[rockm]

This I think hints at how the tree in OP may actually be 1000 years old. If it has been in a pot that entire time, there is likely none of the tree left that was originally potted. If there were such things as pics from hundreds of years ago, it would not look like the same tree. A ficus that old would have been restyled so many times over the centuries, it'd be more comparable to cuttings from the same line kept going for a millennium.
That is something I could believe with relative ease. It's very possible that a sacred temple tree was kept going, at least in the eyes of the caretakers, for 1000 years by keeping cuttings. Whether or not you think that counts is up for debate still.

Again, it'd be really nice if they gave some sort of provenance for 1000 claim. Where they got it; the supposed history as it was told them; anything of any detail. That's the suspect part for me. If they had enough story on it to suggest the age claim could possibly be true, that's the sort of thing people want to hear.

All this rests on what the original seller told Crespi when he bought it back in 1986. Again, the seller was selling a tree to a relatively unknowledgeable buyer (not much intricate bonsai knowledge back then as there is now). There are a list of things that have a funny smell test with the claims on this tree, apart from the lack of actual documentation. The pot, for instance according to the Museum, is the largest bonsai pot in the world. Doubt that is true. May have been true in '86 when he got the tree (after ten years of negotiations with the seller from what the museum says). The pot claim is no longer true (if it ever was), particularly if you look at S.E. Asian trees (where I suspect this one came from in the 60's), but that's just me.

I feel more comfortable with more reasonable, less superlative, claims by other places that have documentation. The Yamaki pine at the National Arboretum, for instance, has been in bonsai cultivation for 400 years by five generations of the same family and has documentation to prove it.

 

[shinmai]

According to Bonsai Empire, Kobayashi has two trees that are 800 years old. If I remember correctly he was the one who paid 800 grand for a tree, because it came with scrolls and books documenting its eight centuries of continuous training.

 

[ShadyStump]

All this rests on what the original seller told Crespi when he bought it back in 1986. Again, the seller was selling a tree to a relatively unknowledgeable buyer (not much intricate bonsai knowledge back then as there is now). There are a list of things that have a funny smell test with the claims on this tree, apart from the lack of actual documentation. The pot, for instance according to the Museum, is the largest bonsai pot in the world. Doubt that is true. May have been true in '86 when he got the tree (after ten years of negotiations with the seller from what the museum says). The pot claim is no longer true (if it ever was), particularly if you look at S.E. Asian trees (where I suspect this one came from in the 60's), but that's just me.

I feel more comfortable with more reasonable, less superlative, claims by other places that have documentation. The Yamaki pine at the National Arboretum, for instance, has been in bonsai cultivation for 400 years by five generations of the same family and has documentation to prove it.

I agree with you. Just playing devil's advocate and speculating on how such a claim could most likely be true.
There's nothing that really lends to credibility.