Also in 2026 Practice Test B English, question 4.
Passage Excerpt from “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees”
Excerpt from “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees”
by Alex Ross
About forty-five hundred years ago, not long after the completion of the Great Pyramid at Giza, a seed of Pinus longaeva, the Great Basin bristlecone pine, landed on a steep slope in what are now known as the White Mountains, in eastern California. The seed may have travelled there on a gust of wind, its flight aided by a winglike attachment to the nut. Or it could have been planted by a bird known as the Clark’s nutcracker, which likes to hide pine seeds in caches; nutcrackers have phenomenal spatial1 memory and can recall thousands of such caches. This seed, however, lay undisturbed. On a moist day in fall, or in the wake of melting snows in spring, a seedling appeared above ground—a stubby one-inch stem with a tuft of bright-green shoots.
Most seedlings die within a year; the mortality rate is more than ninety-nine percent. The survivors are sometimes seen growing in the shadow of a fallen tree. The landscape of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, as this area of the White Mountains is called, is littered with fragments of dead trees—trunks, limbs, roots, and smaller chunks. Pinus longaeva grows exclusively in subalpine regions of the Great Basin, which stretches from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Range, in Utah. Conditions are generally too arid for the dead wood to rot; instead, it erodes, sanded down like rock. The remnants may harbor nutrients and fungi that help new trees grow. Bristlecones rise from the bones of their ancestors—a city within a cemetery.
Coast redwoods and giant sequoias, California’s gargantuan world-record-holding trees, can grow fifty feet or more in their first twenty years. Bristlecones rise agonizingly slowly. After four or five years, the seedling on the steep slope would have been just a few inches higher, sprouting needles in place of the embryonic shoots. The needles are a deep green, tough, resinous, and closely bunched in groups of five. On a mature tree, they live for fifty years or more. Decades may have passed before the tree was human height, and decades more before it resembled a conventional pine. Bristlecone saplings grow straight up, with relatively sparse foliage, looking like undernourished Christmas trees. After a few hundred years—by which time the Old Kingdom of Egypt had fallen—it was probably forty or fifty feet in height.
Many tree species live for hundreds of years. A smaller but not inconsiderable number, including the sequoias and certain yews, oaks, cypresses, and junipers, survive for thousands. Once a bristlecone has established itself in the unforgiving conditions of the White Mountains, it can last almost indefinitely. The trees tend to grow some distance from one another, so fires almost never destroy an entire stand. Because only a few other plant species can handle the dry, cold climate, the bristlecones face little competition. Unlike most plants, they tolerate dolomite soil, which is composed of a chalky type of limestone that is heavily alkaline and low in nutrients. As for insect threats, bristlecone wood is so dense that mountain-pine beetles and other pests can rarely burrow their way into it.
Empires rose and fell; wars raged; . . . and the tree from 2500 B.C. continued its implacable slow-motion existence, adding about two-hundredths of an inch to the diameter of its trunk each year. Minute changes in the tree-ring record make bristlecones an exceptionally useful source of data about changing conditions on Earth. When rains are heavier than normal, the rings widen. When volcanic eruptions cause global cooling, frost rings make the anomaly2 visible. . . .
As the millennia go by, bristlecones become contorted and wraithlike.3 The main stem, or leader, dies back. Entire branches, even the trunk itself, become fossils. At first glance, the tree may look dead. Such is the case of the forty-five-hundred-year-old tree that clings to life near the tourist path that now runs through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Spears of dead wood jut into the air. The trunk is a marbled hulk stripped of bark, like driftwood thrown from a vanished ocean. A ribbon of live bark runs up one side, funneling water and nutrients to clumps of green needles high above. All told, the tree is an unprepossessing specimen; most people march past it without giving it a second glance. . . .
. . . No two super-elderly trees look alike, to the point where they have acquired the characteristics of individuals. Trees are prone to anthropomorphism; we project our dreams and our anxieties onto them. Bristlecones have been called elders, sentinels, sages. The possibility that climate change will cause their extinction has inspired a spate4 of alarmed news stories, although tree scientists tend to discount the idea that the bristlecones are in immediate danger. They have survived any number of catastrophes in the past; they may survive humanity.
From “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees” by Alex Ross from THE NEW YORKER, January 20, 2020. Copyright © 2020 by Condé Nast. All rights reserved.
1spatial: relating to physical space
2anomaly: oddity
3wraithlike: ghostly
4spate: sudden abundance
Question
Which claim is best supported by the details in paragraph 5 about the bristlecone pine’s tree-ring record?
- AThe bristlecone pine must be protected from extinction so that there is a record of changing Earth conditions.
- BThe structure of the bristlecone pine allows scientists to predict changing Earth conditions over time.
- CThe slow growth process of the bristlecone pine allows it to survive in spite of changing Earth conditions.
- DThe bristlecone pine can be used to gather information on changing Earth conditions because of its long life.
Show the answer
Correct answer: D
The question asks which claim is best supported by the details about the bristlecone pine tree’s ring record presented in paragraph 5.
A. Incorrect. In paragraph 5, the author explains that the bristlecone pine is “an exceptionally useful source of data about changing conditions on Earth,” and this suggests that the information presented by the trees is particularly valuable and important. However, while the paragraph explains that the data provided by the trees are important, it does not address the need to protect the trees from any threat of extinction. The only reference to the trees’ extinction is in paragraph 7, when the author addresses the “possibility that climate change will cause their extinction” but then explains that “scientists tend to discount the idea that the bristlecones are in immediate danger.”
B. Incorrect. Paragraph 5 describes “minute changes in the tree-ring record” that make bristlecone pines “an exceptionally useful source of data about changing conditions on Earth,” and examples of those changing conditions are described in the present tense: “When rains are heavier than normal, the rings widen.” However, the term “record” indicates that the tree rings are already formed by the time scientists study them. The trees provide information about the past, which is emphasized by the description at the beginning of paragraph 5 of historic events one tree lived through. The excerpt contains no information about whether scientists can use the climate patterns of the past as evidenced by tree rings to make predictions about the future.
C. Incorrect. Paragraph 5 describes the “slow-motion existence” of the bristlecone pine and provides examples of the record of “changing conditions on Earth” reflected in the rings of the trees. However, although the paragraph makes it clear that the trees have been able to survive these changing conditions, the paragraph does not indicate that the slow growth of the trees, each of which adds only “about two-hundredths of an inch to the diameter of its trunk each year,” is the key to their survival. Instead, paragraph 4 lists other reasons why an established bristlecone pine “can last almost indefinitely,” including distance between individual trees; tolerance for cold, dry conditions and dolomite soil; and wood that is resistant to insects.
D. CORRECT. Paragraph 5 emphasizes the longevity of the bristlecone pine by discussing its “implacable slow-motion existence” and how this makes the trees a valuable source of information for scientists. The author explains that “minute changes in the tree-ring record make bristlecones an exceptionally useful source of data about changing conditions on Earth.” A tree that has been alive since 2500 B.C., like the one in paragraph 5, can provide a long record of the changing climate.
Question analysis
Students decide which claim is best supported by the details about tree rings in paragraph 5 of an article on the ancient bristlecone pines of California’s White Mountains. Every choice links the trees to changing conditions on Earth, so the challenge is noticing which claim stays within what the paragraph actually says.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Choosing the claim a paragraph supports is core grade 7 inference work, and paragraph 5 is only four sentences long. The demand is typical: one careful reading of those sentences, plus attention to the exact wording of each claim.
- Estimated difficulty
- Moderate: several steps, or a close reading with one strong distractor.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly understand
- What makes it hard
- A very close wrong answer moderate
- Reading between the lines moderate
- Every choice must be checked minor
- Evidence
- Answered from one paragraph or stanza
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 8, 851 words; question and choices: about grade 9, 85 words.
- Corrected from the DOE handbook
- An inaccurate detail in the explanation was corrected.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
All four claims tie the bristlecone to changing conditions on Earth, so the paragraph’s topic cannot separate them; only what the paragraph supports can. Two claims go a step past it, one turning a record of the past into a tool for prediction and the other making slow growth the cause of survival. The right claim also goes slightly beyond the words, but only by linking the ring record to the tree’s forty-five centuries.
A very close wrong answer moderate Choosing the answer
The predicting choice shares the key’s frame, the tree giving scientists knowledge of “changing conditions on Earth”; they part on direction, since a ring “record” shows past conditions and forecasts nothing. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Ascalon et al., 2007)
Reading between the lines moderate Working it out
Paragraph 5 credits the rings’ “minute changes,” not the tree’s age, so the key’s “because of its long life” has to be inferred from a tree that has been growing since 2500 B.C. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Every choice must be checked minor Choosing the answer
Every claim mentions changing conditions on Earth, so none can be dropped as off topic; each must be tested against what the four sentences of paragraph 5 actually say. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987)
Strategy: Restate in your own words what paragraph 5 says the tree rings record, then ask of each claim whether those four sentences alone would let you say it.
Traps
- Twists what the text says: Uses the text's topic and ideas but changes what it says: who did it, how much, when, or why.
- Reads too much in: A reasonable-sounding conclusion that goes further than the text allows.
- Outside knowledge: A choice is plausible in the real world but not supported by this text.
The wrong answers, classified
A Outside knowledge (King et al., 2004; Recht & Leslie, 1988)
Turns the value of the ring data into a familiar conservation argument, but paragraph 5 calls for no protection, and paragraph 7 says scientists doubt the trees are in immediate danger.
B Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Reads the present-tense examples, rings that widen when rains are heavy, as a way to forecast, but a tree-ring record shows conditions already past and predicts nothing.
C Reads too much in (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Links the “slow-motion existence” to the tree’s survival as cause and effect, a connection paragraph 5 never makes, and leaves out the tree-ring record the question asks about.
What was corrected from the DOE handbook, and why
- Explanation: In explaining why Option C is wrong, the handbook says paragraph 4 lists “bark that is resistant to insects.” Paragraph 4 says that bristlecone wood “is so dense that mountain-pine beetles and other pests can rarely burrow their way into it”; it says nothing about the bark. The site now says “wood that is resistant to insects.”
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks which claim is best supported by paragraph 5’s details about tree rings. A tree ring is the layer of wood a tree adds each year. You need the claim those details really back up, without adding ideas the paragraph never gives.
Find the tree-ring details
Paragraph 5 says, “Minute changes in the tree-ring record make bristlecones an exceptionally useful source of data about changing conditions on Earth.” Then it gives examples. “When rains are heavier than normal, the rings widen.” When volcanoes cool the planet, “frost rings” show it. The same paragraph describes a tree that has been growing since 2500 B.C.
Explain what the details mean
Minute (said my-NOOT) means tiny. Data means facts and measurements. Each year adds a ring, so the rings work like a diary of conditions on Earth. A tree alive since 2500 B.C. holds about 4,500 years of these yearly entries. Its long life is what makes its record so long and so useful.
Check each choice
- A does not fit. Paragraph 5 never says the tree must be protected. Paragraph 7 even says scientists doubt it is in immediate danger.
- B does not fit. A record shows what already happened. Nothing says the rings can predict the future.
- C does not fit. Paragraph 5 never says slow growth keeps the tree alive. Paragraph 4 gives the reasons, such as wood too dense for insects. C also leaves out the rings.
- D fits. A tree that lives for thousands of years keeps a ring record of changing conditions over all that time.
Choose the answer
The rings record changes on Earth, and the tree’s great age makes that record long. So the answer is D.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
B comes nearest to the right answer. Like D, it says the tree gives scientists facts about changing conditions on Earth. But the rings are a “record,” and a record tells about the past, not the future. D stays with what the paragraph supports: a long-lived tree holds a long record of change.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Excerpt from “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees”” as printed (pages 193–194)
