Many of the world’s most ancient organisms are trees, including a 3,600-year-old cypress in Chile. …But according to a paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science, time ravages us all in the end. The paper, “Long-Lived Trees Are Not Immortal,” argues that even the most venerable trees have physiological limits — though we, with our puny life spans, may never be able to tell. Sergi Munné-Bosch, a plant biologist at the University of Barcelona, wrote the article in response to a study on ginkgo trees, which… found that 600-year-old ginkgos are as reproductively and photosynthetically vigorous as their 20-year-old peers …“In my opinion at least, there is no immortality,” he said. Those tree species that can live for centuries or millenniums have a lot of tricks for staying youthful. …For these reasons, it’s much more likely that such a tree will die of external causes than age-related ones.