At the foot of China’s Zhongnan Mountains, golden leaves blanket the courtyard of the Gu Guanyin Temple. The source of this shimmering display is a towering ginkgo tree, so old that it may have rooted here a thousand years ago. It has survived dynasties, revolutions, and concrete. What saved it? Not a conservation law or a fence — but faith.

According to a new study out this week, temples across China — Buddhist and Taoist alike — have safeguarded tens of thousands of ancient trees, acting as accidental arks in a landscape transformed by human hands.

The researchers documented 46,966 trees over a century old within 6,545 religious sites, including many that no longer grow anywhere else.

“It’s where ecological and spiritual values converge,” Yongchuan Yang, a conservation researcher at Chongqing University and a senior author of the study, told Nature.

A Legacy of Living Monuments

The scale of the project is staggering. Led by Li Huang and colleagues from institutions in China and Australia, the team compiled data from national tree inventories and local forestry surveys. They focused on trees older than 100 years that grow outside of natural forests — in villages, cities, and farmlands.

Of the ancient trees surveyed, nearly 6,000 belong to 61 species officially listed as threatened in China. Astonishingly, eight of those species are found only on temple grounds. Among them is the critically endangered Carpinus putoensis, whose only known living specimen — an estimated 200-year-old tree — still stands solemnly at Huiji Temple in Zhejiang Province. This is an example of what conservation biologists call “living dead” species.

In a country where centuries of agricultural and urban expansion have felled forests and fragmented habitats, temples emerged as unexpected sanctuaries. The researchers found that old trees were over 7,000 times denser inside temple grounds than outside. Their average age inside temples is 261 years, whereas outside it’s just over 200.

Some trees go back even further. The oldest documented individual tree was likely planted during the Eastern Han Dynasty, around the time China’s first state-sponsored Buddhist temple, Baima Temple, was built in 68 CE.

“Despite limited area and often artificial settings, temples serve as hotspots and long-term refuges,” the researchers wrote.

Sacred Roots and Spiritual Spread

Faith has shaped China’s botanical landscape in other ways, too.

Certain tree species — like Ginkgo biloba, Podocarpus macrophyllus, and Platycladus orientalis — hold deep symbolic value in Buddhism. Monks and devotees cultivated them intentionally, embedding them into temple life and ritual.

The researchers tracked how these “Buddhist species” spread across China not by natural dispersal, but by cultural propagation. Although such species made up only 12.5% of the total recorded, they accounted for a whopping 65% of all old trees in Buddhist temples.

And they often grow far outside their native ranges. Ginkgo biloba once clung to a few glacial refuges in China’s southern mountains. But today, ginkgos flourish across much of the country — thanks largely to the religion that venerated them. Some temple ginkgos are over 1,000 years old.

“Buddhist temples preserved many individuals of culturally important plants beyond their natural distribution,” the authors noted.

It’s a powerful example of what ecologists call “cultural range expansion” — the spread of species through human belief systems, not seed dispersers or pollinators.

Threatened Trees, Endangered Practices

What does this mean for conservation?

To David Lindenmayer, a co-author from the Australian National University, the study provides a template for safeguarding biodiversity through cultural partnerships.

“These trees are ecologically vital,” he said. “They store carbon, provide habitat, and serve as seed sources. But more than that, they connect people to landscapes.”

Old trees are often keystone structures, stabilizing soils, cycling nutrients, and hosting countless animals and epiphytes. Their gnarled trunks and vast canopies reflect centuries of survival—and support webs of life that younger trees cannot.

Yet these natural monuments are also vulnerable. Climate change, invasive pests, and extreme weather events threaten even the most secluded groves. And while temples have protected trees from the axe and the plow, they cannot shield them from drought or typhoons.

“Although temple environments protect old trees from direct human disturbances, they remain vulnerable to climate-related stresses,” the researchers warned.

In many cases, regeneration is a problem. People mow temple grounds or pave them with stone, making it hard for seedlings to take root. The authors recommend active propagation, using seeds from the oldest trees to cultivate new generations.

Conservation Through Culture

For conservationists, the message is clear: saving nature doesn’t always require a fence. Sometimes, it takes a prayer.

This isn’t a uniquely Chinese phenomenon. Similar refuges exist in India’s sacred groves, Japan’s shrine forests, and West Africa’s ancestral tree sites. But China’s case stands out for its scale — and its systematic study.

The paper urges policymakers to recognize cultural heritage as a conservation ally. In China, this could mean funding for temple tree care, integration into biodiversity planning, or public education campaigns that highlight the role of religious sites.

The trees themselves are living chronicles.

At Tanzhe Temple in Beijing, 178 ancient trees grow in majesty, as they have done so for hundreds of years. One of them, a stately Platycladus orientalis, is believed to be over 1,200 years old. It leans slightly, weathered but still thriving.

The findings appeared in the journal Current Biology.