Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in White Mountains, California by Marcin Zajac
This gnarly tree is an ancient bristlecone pine growing in the White Mountains of Eastern California at an elevation of over 10,000 ft (3200m).
These trees are the oldest living non-clonal organisms in the world and some of them have been dated to be nearly 5,000 years old. That means they were alive when the pyramids were being built in Egypt!
Conditions in these remote mountains are very harsh, with cold temperatures, a short growing season, high winds, and barren soil.
And yet bristlecone pines thrive in these conditions and attain their great age not despite their harsh environment, but because of it - the pines grow very slowly which makes their wood very dense and resistant to insects, disease, and erosion.
Marcin Zajac is a landscape photographer from Poland who resides in Northern California, working as a software engineer. His passion for photography has taken him to various breathtaking locations, including Australia's coastline and Iceland's rugged volcanic landscape. Marcin's work has earned recognition in multiple photography contests, such as being shortlisted four consecutive times (2019-2022) for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year by Royal Museum Greenwich and winning the People's Choice award in 2021. Additionally, he was awarded NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day in 2020 and placed among the top 101 photographs in the prestigious International Landscape Photographer of the Year competition in 2021.
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