The oldest continuously documented tree on earth was planted by Ashoka’s daughter.

Evidence

Sanghamitta. Mahinda’s sister. Also Ashoka’s child. She also entered the saṅgha, as a bhikkhuni — a fully ordained Buddhist nun. She followed her brother to Sri Lanka a few years after he had established the monastery, bringing with her, as her central gift to the island, a cutting from the Bodhi Tree at Bodh Gaya — the tree under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment. That cutting, planted in Anuradhapura around 245 BCE, survives. The Sri Maha Bodhi tree at Anuradhapura is still alive in 2026. It is the oldest continuously documented tree on earth, 2,270 years and counting, tended by Buddhist monastics in unbroken succession. Sanghamitta planted it. — , The Rod and the Child, 859

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains bhikkhuni and the Sri Maha Bodhi tree’s claim to oldest continuously documented tree.