Trees are the largest plants on earth and the longest-living organisms on the planet, with giant sequoias living for more than 3,000 years and the tallest sequoia rising more than 275 feet. Minnesota does not match California's giant sequoias in age or height, but it has many substantial, long-lived trees, including white cedars in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness believed to be more than 1,000 years old, and many trees over 100 feet tall such as aspen, cottonwood, elm, pine, and spruce. The state is also home to the nation's largest jack pine, red pine, and white spruce. In southeastern Minnesota, oak trees are often the oldest species, including a bur oak southwest of here on private land with a girth of more than 20 feet and an estimated age of 300 to 500 years, meaning it began growing before George Washington was born in 1732. Oaks thrive in this region because they prefer sunlight and well-drained soil, and bur oaks were often the first trees to take root in the tallgrass prairie because their thick bark protected them from frequent uncontrolled prairie fires. In the surrounding valleys and hillsides, red oak and less often white oak can be found, and their acorns feed deer, turkey, squirrels, and other wildlife. This sloping hillside may once have been a dry oak savanna, a rare Minnesota prairie type in the transition zone between prairie and woodland, where bur oak and northern pin oak grew until the decline of prairie fires allowed other trees to invade and turn these savannas into wooded hillsides.