… The scrubby little creosote bush, known as King Clone, sits in an untidy ring just off Bessemer Mine Road (if you can call it a road), not far from Pioneertown. What looks like an oblong collection of bushes is actually a single, thriving clonal colony with a genetically unique starting point buried underground. That first plant from all those thousands of years ago has, in essence, been regenerating slowly for close to 12,000 years, a single living organism that’s as old as the ice age. King Clone, for all intents and purposes, is among the oldest living anything on this planet. … It’s even possible that, somewhere way out past Soggy Dry Lake, there’s a hidden clonal creosote bush that’s somehow even larger and older than King Clone, but that seems unlikely.