"While reading 'Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens,' by Marc Hamer, I often found myself wondering how old its author was..."

"... in part because the arc of the book follows Hamer getting too old to work as a gardener anymore. However, I hesitated to research his age. In Chapter 10, titled 'Gardener,' Hamer mentions the discovery, in 2006, of the world’s oldest living creature, a clam. The clam, named Ming, was five hundred and seven years old. It had been found off the coast of Iceland, and died when the scientists who discovered it tried to ascertain its age."

Writes Rivka Galchen, in "How Gardens Promise the Renewal of Life—and Its End/In 'Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens,' Marc Hamer wonders what he leaves behind him" (The New Yorker).

You can buy "Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Garden" at that link, at Amazon.

And here's the Wikipedia page for the clam "named Ming." I put that in quotes because I think if a creature has been living for hundreds of years, nameless, it's awfully presumptuous to suddenly assign him a name, just because you've discovered him. It's right there with determining an age and, as part of the process, killing it.

The clam was initially named Ming by Sunday Times journalists, in reference to the Ming dynasty, during which it was born.

So there was some cultural appropriation going on too. It was from the ocean near Iceland, and not at all Chinese (if it makes any sense to say that animals belong to the political subdivisions of human society).

Later, the Icelandic researchers on the cruise which discovered the clam named it Hafrún, a woman's name which translates roughly as 'the mystery of the ocean'; taken from haf, 'ocean', and rún, 'mystery').

I approve. That's much better, and yet Wikipedia names the article "Ming (clam)." I still am delighted that there's a famous clam. Are there other famous clams?

The actual sex of the clam, however, is unknown, as its reproductive state was recorded as "spent".

How many of you identify as "spent"?!