A cool thing I ran across!
What if the tree of time from the Legend of Korra is actually a bristlecone pine? The oldest one (that we know of) is 4,800+ years old. The species is known for its longevity. Assuming the tree of time was just a baby when the Avatar cycle started, and it's 10,000 years from then to Korra's time, would it be possible for an actual bristlecone pine to live that long when the oldest one we know of is already halfway there?
I was not able to confirm with my brief amount of research that bristlecone pines are basically immortal if nothing kills them, but that was the claim that I heard that made me research them in the first place. I think they do look like a cool contender for the species of trees, and maybe the creators heard the same thing and that's why they chose it?
Sure, something, something, spirit world the tree is probably a spirit. But what if it is still the spirit of the oldest bristlecone pine in existence? What if when the portal to the spirit world was closed by Wan this tree was just so fucking old that whatever magic decided what goes where was like "This thing has to be a spirit right? Non spirits just do not live that long. But it's also not quite really a spirit is it?" So it locked the bristlecone pine in the boundary between the spirit and physical world. And in its anguish at being removed from the physical world, where it actually belongs, it started just observing and collecting memories of everything that happened in the physical world. Maybe at some point it did become full on spirit, but it still never forgot where it came from and where it actually belonged.
Anyways that's my random Legend of Korra theory for the day!
