Because some trees are extremely old and just don’t die, and I’m in need of some answers.
In: Biology
Not really, but neither do humans.
But before we get into that let’s show why you can’t compare a plant to a complex animal like a mamal, like a human.
Many trees that we like and cultivate are from cuttings of the trees we like, and thus are a type of clone. If theres one “variety” of apple you like, remember that it’s actally all from one tree and cloned over and over (granny smiths are all the same one tree and are not a parent/child type reproduction). If you plant an apple seed, the resultant tree would be different than the parent, but a cutting is not.
That difference in reproduction methods is important. The fact that cuttings/clones are viable is caused by the way plants live, with each section of the organism able to grow all the other parts. You can plant the root or the trunk and it’ll grow the missing parts, meaning no one part is absolutely critical.
A human can only be reproduced one way, from the seed. You can’t nuture a kidney to grow a whole person, and a person cannot live at all without a kidney. We have dozens (hundreds?) of critical parts which we need 100% all of them to continue living.
Why is this distinction important?
(ELI5 version) Age is the process of DNA splitting and copying 99.99999999% over and over all the time. It’s not perfect, and thats why we age. Once our DNA for kidneys is too far off to continue functioning, they shut down and we die. The same happens to our liver, heart, lungs, brain… There are lots of ways that age can kill us, but it’s not the age directly, it’s just the consequences of age.
If a tree has a group of cells that can mo longer perform as needed, other cells can just grow and replace it because as discussed, a whole tree can be grown from any one part. It’ll never have a failing heart, kidney, or lung, not just because it doesn’t have them, but because it doesn’t need them to live.
edit: aging is actually much more complex than this, but I was trying for super simplified, for more info ask about telomeres. Also not all plants can be grown from cuttings, it was just the example used to show the enormous differences between fauna and flora.
There’s no such thing as dying of old age technically, rather you stop keeping up with all the necessary maintenance in your body. I would believe that like other organisms, plants stop keeping up on maintenance as they get older. Then something that normally can’t hurt the plant can wipe it out without trying.
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Technically yes. Some plants last for mine season before dying.
Most trees would die for a number of reasons outside human control. Fungus, fire, flooding, insects, lighting, natural resources
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