Also in 2026 Practice Test B English, question 7.
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
Throughout the excerpt, the author conveys his point of view mainly by
- Asharing details about the qualities of the bristlecone pine that make it an unusual tree.
- Bcomparing the bristlecone pine to global empires that lasted thousands of years before falling.
- Cexplaining the way the seemingly sickly appearance of the bristlecone pine contrasts with its ability to survive.
- Darguing that the bristlecone pine has survived past threats to its survival and will continue to thrive.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The question asks how the author mainly conveys his point of view throughout the excerpt.
A. CORRECT. The author clearly conveys his interest in and admiration of the bristlecone pine by sharing many details throughout the excerpt that show how unusual the tree is; these include details about the tree using remnants from previous generations (paragraph 2), details about the tree’s “agonizingly” slow growth rate (paragraph 3), and details about the incredibly difficult growing conditions that the tree thrives in (paragraph 4).
B. Incorrect. While the author does briefly compare the bristlecone pine to global empires (paragraphs 1, 3, and 5), he mainly offers many details throughout the excerpt about what makes the bristlecone pine so unusual.
C. Incorrect. While paragraph 6 largely focuses on the contrast of the pine’s sickly appearance with its ability to survive, this is just one detail about the pine that makes it unusual. The author offers many such details throughout the excerpt.
D. Incorrect. The author suggests in paragraph 7 that the bristlecone pine “may survive humanity,” but this is just one detail about the bristlecone that the author offers in an excerpt full of details, each of which contributes to an understanding of how unusual this tree is.
Question analysis
This point-of-view question asks how Alex Ross mainly conveys his view of the bristlecone pine throughout an excerpt from his article “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees.” His attitude is never stated directly, and each choice is tied to something in the piece, so students must judge what he does most consistently.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Grade 7 readers are regularly asked how an author reveals a point of view in nonfiction. This excerpt is long and descriptive, and every choice grows out of a real detail, so students must weigh the whole piece before choosing.
- Estimated difficulty
- Moderate: several steps, or a close reading with one strong distractor.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 3, strategic thinking · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- Evidence in several places moderate
- How, not what moderate
- Evidence
- Answered from the whole text
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 8, 851 words; question and choices: about grade 9, 75 words.
- 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
Every choice grows from something real in the excerpt, so the question turns on the word “throughout.” The strongest lure describes paragraph 6 well but nothing else, another inflates the closing “may survive humanity” into an argument, and a third makes the history references the method. Students who sum up each paragraph in a few words see that most of them describe an unusual feature of the tree, which is how the author’s admiration comes through.
Evidence in several places moderate Working it out
The author’s view has to be gathered from across the excerpt: seedlings rising from dead wood, growth “agonizingly slowly,” wood too dense for beetles, the ring record and the fossilized trunk. (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990; Gorin & Embretson, 2006)
How, not what moderate Working it out
The stem asks how the view is conveyed, a method, so students must notice that the author seldom states an opinion and instead piles up details that make the tree remarkable. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Strategy: Note in a few words what the author does in each paragraph, then test each choice against that list, keeping in mind that the question says “throughout.”
Traps
- Too narrow: A single detail offered as the central idea or a summary, or a summary that keeps minor details and leaves out an essential part.
- Too broad or too strong: A choice overstates, generalizes, or uses absolute words the text does not support.
- 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.
The wrong answers, classified
B Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Turns the brief mentions of the Great Pyramid, the Old Kingdom and fallen empires, which mark how long the tree has lived, into a comparison with empires that lasted millennia.
C Too narrow (King et al., 2004)
Takes paragraph 6’s contrast between a tree that “may look dead” and one that “clings to life” for the author’s method throughout, though it is one striking detail among many.
D Too broad or too strong (King et al., 2004)
Hardens the closing “they may survive humanity” into a confident claim that the tree will thrive, and calls the excerpt an argument, though it mostly describes.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks how the author mainly shows his point of view, his attitude toward the bristlecone. The word “throughout” means across the whole excerpt. So the answer must describe something he does in most paragraphs, not just one.
Note what each paragraph does
- Paragraph 1: a seed lands about 4,500 years ago.
- Paragraph 2: young trees grow from the dead wood of old ones.
- Paragraph 3: they grow “agonizingly slowly.”
- Paragraph 4: they survive cold, dry air, poor soil and insects.
- Paragraph 5: their rings record changes on Earth.
- Paragraph 6: an ancient tree looks dead but “clings to life.”
- Paragraph 7: the trees “may survive humanity.”
Find the pattern
Almost every paragraph adds a fact about something unusual in the tree. The author rarely states his opinion outright. Instead, he piles up amazing details: its great age, its slow growth, its toughness. These details show his wonder and respect without his having to say so.
Check each choice
- A fits. Across the whole excerpt, the author shares details that make the tree unusual.
- B does not fit. The pyramid, the Old Kingdom and the fallen empires come up only briefly, to mark how long the tree has lived. They are not the author’s main method.
- C does not fit. The contrast between looking sickly and staying alive belongs to paragraph 6 only.
- D does not fit. The excerpt mostly describes rather than argues. And “they may survive humanity” is a maybe, not a promise that the trees will thrive.
Choose the answer
The author’s view comes through the many unusual details he gathers. So the answer is A.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
C is the strongest trap, because paragraph 6 really does contrast a tree that “may look dead” with one that “clings to life.” But the question says “throughout.” That contrast is one detail in one paragraph. A describes what the author does in nearly every paragraph.
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)
