3,500 Year Old Florida Tree Dies of Natural Causes

hondo77 writes with an excerpt from The Daily "'Mother Nature claimed one of her oldest living specimens (Monday) in a freak fire that destroyed a 3,500-year-old bald cypress tree towering over central Florida. Known as "The Senator," or simply "The Big Tree," the hollowed-out majestic timber, standing at 118 feet tall, ignited before dawn. Firefighters watched helplessly as the oldest tree east of the Mississippi — and the fifth oldest in the world — blazed and then collapsed in a heap of flaming embers.' The fire likely started by 'either a weeks- old lightning strike that smoldered until combustion occured, or friction caused by buffeting winds that ignited a spark and erupted in flames.'"

If only trees could talk

[elrous0]

This one would have had a TON of boring stories about animals walking by.

Re:Sigh

[sideslash]

Actually, there's a good answer for that: One of the really fulfilling and profounding affirming activities for nerds to engage in on a tech / "news for nerds" site is to complain about articles that don't fit that profile. But the problem is that if there never were any irrelevant articles, nobody would have anything to complain about, and thus we would have a compromised experience. It's paradoxical, but everything seems to be going according to plan.

Mixed feelings

[GameboyRMH]

On one hand one of the oldest trees in the world is no more, but on the other hand a Senator died in a fire...

Re:Natural Causes

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. Better title would have been "oldest tree dies of smoking related causes.".

Re:Natural Causes

[elrous0]

Damn you, Phillip Morris!!!

Re:Natural Causes

[SJHillman]

If a person were to die in a naturally caused forest fire, it's generally not attributed to natural causes. It's attributed to burning in a fire.

Something really old died in Florida?

[rbrander]

Wow. I wonder if that ever happened before.

Re:Friction Caused by Buffeting Winds?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so improbable. Such a freak occurrence might only happen once every three and a half thousand years...

Re:Got that right!

[batquux]

I think it was the light from Venus that was focused through a lens of marsh gas that started the fire.

I'll miss you Treebeard

[StoutFiles]

You decided I wasn't an orc. I'll never forget you.

Re:Clarification please

[somersault]

I'm guessing he means BoingBoing [boingboing.net].

When I hear "boing boing" I just think "TITS!", but apparently it's a new aggregator..

Re:Natural Causes

[kungfugleek]

Yes. Trees need to keep the smoke inside. If you let the smoke out, they die.

Re:Clarification please

[ColdWetDog]

When I hear "boing boing" I just think "TITS!", but apparently it's a new aggregator..

The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. In fact ....

Re:Sigh

[mcgrew]

Ok, I'm not normally one of the guy's who says this... but

Guy's what? Guy's sockpuppet? And which guy?

Slashdot isn't a tech site, it's a nerd site. The environmental and bioligical sciences are as interesting to us nerds as astronomy, physics, chemistry, any of the other sciences, OR technology.

What is there to discuss here?

If you hadn't tried so hard to make first post you would have been able to see for yourself.

Re:If only trees could talk

[hvm2hvm]

Depends on how you process the wood to turn into paper.

The Perfect Crime!

[Greyfox]

Was it natural causes or was it... MURDER?! Certainly no one would SUSPECT the other trees in the area! But they all just STOOD there!

Re:Too little too late

[Shotgun]

I live halfway up the US coast in North Carolina. I too could have thrown a rock at the tree.

Wouldn't have hit it, but....

8*)