New Absolutely Enormous Tree Species Discovered In Tanzania – And It Might Live For 3,000 Years

You’d have thought scientists would know about all of the extremely large tree species out there by now given that they’re, y’know, frickin’ huge. But as the discovery of a brand new, absolutely massive, and long-lived species of tree in the mountains of Tanzania makes clear, even giants can be good at hiding.

The new species was discovered in the rainforests of the Udzungwa Mountains during field surveys and has been named Tessmannia princeps. It takes its specific name, princeps, from the Latin term meaning “the most eminent”, because of the way that the tree grows above the rest of the rainforest canopy.

And that’s a very high point for it to reach – T. princeps is about 35 to 40 meters (115 to 131 feet) tall, or about 20 to 27 Danny DeVitos stacked on top of each other. Not quite as high up as the world’s tallest tree, sure, but definitely pretty notable. It’s fairly chonky too, with the trunk measuring anywhere up to 2.7 meters (8.9 feet) in diameter.

The height and width of T. princeps are enough to color us impressed, but it turns out that’s not all – the new species might also be exceptionally long-lived. When the team who discovered the new species investigated a fallen individual, they counted 12 to 15 rings in just a single centimeter of wood taken from its core.

Not only does this suggest that the tree grows in width very slowly – trees normally add one ring per year – but also “would put the age of the bigger trees around 2,000-3,000 years,” study author Andrea Bianchi told Mongabay.

Bianchi noted that this isn’t always the most reliable method of aging trees, but if other methods support this initial measurement, then some of T. princeps’ members could’ve been kicking about since before Rome was founded. 

T. princeps also has a very fun way of dispersing its seeds – and by fun, we mean ballistically. It uses a method called explosive dehiscence, which means that the seeds are forcefully ejected from their pods. While this giant tree is far from the only plant species to make use of this explosive technique, it does make it stand out against the others in its genus.

That doesn’t mean the tree has spread far and wide, though; the researchers only found around 100 mature individuals across two populations, both growing super close to each other within the same location. Pair that with the finding that they appear to grow slowly, and that makes T. princeps vulnerable – and the team suggests it should be classed as such under the IUCN Red List.

The upside is that the region where T. princeps was discovered is currently part of a forest restoration project that aims to reconnect patches of ancient rainforest, which could offer the new species some protection.

It’s important that these efforts don’t go south – otherwise, things could get worse for the giant tree.

“If the project were to cease, T. princeps would be immediately threatened with habitat loss and would then need to be assessed as Critically Endangered,” the researchers conclude.

The study is published in Phytotaxa.

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