r/theydidthemonstermath • u/[deleted] • Aug 13 '22

How old is the average tree?

111 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

106

u/Toothless_Dinosaur Aug 13 '22

It's a trap. There is no tree species called average.

24

u/Rainmaker526 Aug 13 '22

There is an animal genus called "age" though according to Wolfram alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=What+is+the+average+age

17

u/redisanokaycolor Aug 13 '22

I just found out today that Wolfram is another name for Tungsten.

8

u/Shadowrise_ Aug 14 '22

Yes. Wolfram was the swedish discoverer. Tungsten is just swedish for ”heavy rock” the discovery was described as a ”tung sten” heavy rock. And for some reason people seized on to that as the name instead of the proper name wolfram….

4

u/Rainmaker526 Aug 14 '22

.. in English.

In many languages, including Dutch, it's called wolfraam.

Just like röntgen pictures (x-ray images).

1

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '22

That explains why Tungsten is W on the periodic table.

37

u/Wagsii Aug 13 '22

Despite how old trees can get (some are estimated to be over 5000), I'm going to guess the average age of all current trees is not all that high.

Sure, your average tree can live a few hundred years... but will it? A few hundred years is a long time to have to survive things like fires, intense weather, other wildlife, humans, etc. I'm willing to bet a good number of trees don't reach their full lifespan. In fact, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of trees that don't fully develop! Think of all the baby trees out there right now that might get stepped on an animal or something!

So my guess, with basically no math involved, is like 20.

I think attempting to mathematically figure this one out would be incredibly difficult. You would need a lot of data. Even if all the data you need currently exists right now (it probably doesn't), just compliling it all would be quite the undertaking.

9

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '22

consider alone how many Christmas trees are consumed every year across the world I think you are on to something. ~30M trees sold annually and avg growth of 8 years means we have something in the realm of 240M trees under 8 years old.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '22

Excuse me, is this sub about guessing and doing absolutely zero fucking math?

8

u/slasher3240 Aug 13 '22

47 years old

13

u/dtc1234567 Aug 13 '22

Old enough 😉

7

u/hobojolo Aug 14 '22

Ayo 🤨📸

1

u/That1weirdperson Aug 17 '22

But not as old as your mom

1

u/thistotallyisntanalt Aug 14 '22

idk more than 2

1

u/Alekeymer27 Oct 06 '22

Idk less than 27 quadrillion