Just off Bessemer Mine Road, not far from Pioneertown, in California’s Mojave Desert stands what appears to be an unremarkable ring of shrubs. To a casual observer, it looks like a cluster of ordinary creosote bushes growing in a circle. Yet this humble patch of vegetation is one of the most extraordinary living things on Earth. Known as King Clone, it is estimated to be about 11,700 years old—older than nearly every human civilization that has ever existed. Scientists consider it one of the oldest living organisms on the planet.
King Clone. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
King Clone is not a single bush in the conventional sense. It is a clonal colony of the creosote bush, or Larrea tridentata. Every stem in the ring is genetically identical and descended from a single ancestral plant that began growing near the end of the last Ice Age. Although the original central stem died long ago, the organism itself survived by continually producing new growth around its outer edges. In biological terms, the entire ring is considered one living organism.
The creosote bush is one of the most resilient plants in North America's deserts. As it ages, its oldest branches die back and its crown begins to split into separate sections. These sections continue growing outward while remaining genetically connected. Over centuries and millennia, the center gradually dies away, leaving a ring-shaped colony surrounding the spot where the original plant once stood. This process allows the organism to persist for extraordinary lengths of time, even though individual stems may live only a fraction of the colony's total age.
Creosote bush. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
King Clone was identified in the early 1970s by botanist Frank Vasek and his colleagues. The discovery began when researchers studying aerial photographs noticed an unusually large and symmetrical creosote ring in the desert. From ground level it looked unremarkable, but from above its circular shape suggested that it might be a single ancient clone rather than a collection of unrelated plants. Subsequent research confirmed that the stems belonged to one genetic individual.
Determining the age of a living organism that old posed a challenge. Vasek and his team employed two independent methods. First, they measured the outward growth rate of the ring. Second, they used radiocarbon dating on pieces of dead wood recovered from the center of the colony. Both approaches produced remarkably similar results, indicating an age of approximately 11,700 years.
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The colony is enormous by creosote-bush standards. The ring reaches as much as 20 meters (67 feet) across and averages about 14 meters (45 feet) in diameter. Yet despite its great age, it grows at an almost imperceptible pace. Observations made decades apart have shown that the colony expands by only a tiny amount over a human lifetime. According to reports, when Sir David Attenborough revisited the plant in 2022 after first filming it in 1982, it had grown less than an inch in forty years.
Creosote bush. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
When King Clone first sprouted, mammoths had only recently disappeared from North America, sea levels were still rising after the last glacial period, and agriculture was just beginning to emerge in parts of the world. Throughout all of recorded history, while empires rose and fell and countless species vanished, this desert organism continued its slow outward expansion beneath the Mojave sun.
Today King Clone is protected within the King Clone Ecological Reserve in California's Mojave Desert. The site is fenced and access is restricted to prevent damage to the fragile colony.
References:
# One of Earth's oldest plants sits in the Calif. desert, and no one cares. SFGate
# King Clone Creosote. Mojave Project
# Creosote Bushes Are the Mojave Desert’s Time Travelers. California Curated
# Creosote Bush: Long-Lived Clones in the Mojave Desert. Frank Vasek
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