Question: what is the most healthy plant?

Emma Bennett answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Well this all depends on what you mean by healthy. If you were talking about plants that are good for people to eat then I’m afraid that there is no clear winner and it is true that a balanced diet is best. This is because different plants contain different amounts of essential nutrients, so although oranges are a great source of vitamin C they don’t provide everything and so you also need to eat green leafy vegetables such as spinach to get nutrients such as vitamin K.

Unfortunately the way we cook plants often means that we remove some of the nutrients and therefore eating vegetables raw could be healthier but personally I don’t fancy trying raw broccoli.

If however you meant which plants are able to keep themselves the healthiest then a bristlecone pine tree in California named Methuselah is certainly doing very well. This is quite possibly one of the oldest living organisms on the planet being over 4600 years old, meaning that it was around when the pyramids were built! Several factors have helped it to get to this grand old age and one of these is its highly resinous wood that makes it really difficult for insects, bacteria and fungi to get inside the tree and cause damage.