Lords of the rings: Four Utah trees reign as the oldest of their kind — and they provide peeks at the past, clues to the future

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Stan Kitchen, a research botanist at the Shrub Sciences Laboratory in Provo, describes the details on two ponderosa pine samples. One from a much wetter climate on the Tushar Mountains, at left, dated at over 350 years and the other from a much drier climate on the Wah Wah Mountains dates back 941 years. Kitchen examines tree-ring data to get a picture of fire and climate history.