Don’t Be Jealous: Ginkgo Trees Live Thousands of Years – Might Even Be Immortal

China’s ginkgo trees can live for thousands of years – if not forever. And they don’t visibly age much, either: trees that are centuries old have just as many seeds and leaves as young ones!

A new DNA study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has shown that gingko trees don’t decline much as they grow, but rather keep pumping out protective molecular chemicals that keep them healthy in old age. A ginkgo tree in the Zhongnan Mountains, for example, is now over 1,400 years old, and looks like it can easily survive centuries – or even millennia – more.

According to study author Richard Dixon, a biologist at the University of North Texas, the immune system of a thousand-year-old ginkgo tree “looks like that of a 20-year-old.”

Peter Brown, a biologist not involved in the study, tells the New York Times that ginkgo trees could even theoretically be immortal.