Nice To Know At Least One Thing Has Survived Since This Country Was Founded

It's a pear tree.
Not just any pear tree either, this one has been around since before this country was founded.

383 years to be exact.


One of the first fruit trees planted in America is still alive and well at age 383

It may be hard to believe, however, but one of America's earliest settlers is still alive today -- and still bearing fruit after 383 years.

Among the first wave of immigrants to the New World was an English Puritan named John Endicott, who in 1629, arrived to serve as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Charged with the task of establishing a welcoming setting for new arrivals upon the untamed land, the Pilgrim leader set about making the area around modern-day Salem as homey as possible.

In approximately 1630, as his children watched on, Endicott planted one of the first fruit trees to be cultivated in America: a pear sapling imported from across the Atlantic. He is said to have declared at the time: "I hope the tree will love the soil of the old world and no doubt when we have gone the tree will still be alive."

The tree did outlive all witnesses to its planting -- as well as generations and generations that followed.

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Through the 20th century, Endicott's pear tree endured as the United States -- the nation it predates by 146 years -- continued to grow up around it. Through several more strong hurricanes, and even a vandal attack in the 1960s, the tree never stopped bearing fruit.

Although its pears have been described as "medium in size, unattractive, and coarse textured", the tree's shortcomings have been more than made up for by its resilience -- a legacy that will carry on even after the sands of time eventually wither its branches. The USDA's National Clonal Germplasm Repository, a seed bank, successfully produced a clone of Endicott's pear tree.

There is more at the link about the long history of this old tree, it is one tough old fruit tree.

Redwoods live to be thousands of years old but I have never in my life heard of a fruit tree living as long as this one has and it still bears fruit to this day.

Amazing.