Oldest Spruce Tree EVER!

So I received an e-mail earlier this week from someone asking whether Lucidia helps with spruce allergies. I let him know that Lucidia relieves spruce allergies because of its ability to strengthen the immune system, cleanse the body of allergens and act as a decongestant, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, etc.

Ok, but that's not the point of my story here... the point is that I wanted to get an idea of where this person was potentially e-mailing from so that I could hopefully better answer his question depending on the region he was living in. So I googled the spruce tree and this is one of the links that I came across...

The world's oldest known living tree (9,550 years old), a conifer that first took root at the end of the last Ice Age, has been discovered in Sweden... I admit, I'm a bit of a skeptic. For all the years of schooling I've been through and well... just good ol' plain observation, I thought that the circumference of the tree was a good outside indicator of the age of the tree. Take a look at this picture and someone please explain where I went wrong in all those years of biology...If it is, in fact, over 9,000 years old - I'm impressed and amazed! It's at a time like this that I wish I had the ability to touch something and know its history. If any of you ever watched the Heroes tv series, then you'll know what I'm referring to. There was a character who could touch an object and know it's past. Of all the "powers" that people had on that show, the ability to know an objects' past and all that it has seen, felt, achieved, heard, etc. would be the power for me. How cool would it be to know what this tree has been through.