Experts once believed the Wollemi pine tree went extinct. But in the 1990s, it was rediscovered in Australia. Also called the dinosaur tree, the Wollemi pine is one of the oldest tree species in the world. However, it’s under threat of real extinction from climate change and wildfires. To guarantee their survival, conservationists bred genetically diverse Wollemi pines and distributed them to botanical gardens all over the world. At last, the one in England has bore fruit, sparking hope for the future of this living fossil.
A rare dinosaur tree grows cones for the first time
The dinosaur tree is considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. The devastating bushfire of 2019 to 2020 burned down most of Australia’s Wollemi National Park, where they were first rediscovered. However, the firefighters protected the remaining specimens. So seeing the trees bear fruit is a great celebration for everyone who had fought to protect them. That includes retired couple Pamela and Alistair Thompson, who planted the newsworthy tree in their garden in 2010. “It would be amazing, absolutely amazing, to have seedlings and to propagate from the world’s rarest tree,” said Pamela, a retired police officer, to the Hereford Times. “I couldn’t imagine being so lucky to do it.”
The couple paid $93 (£70) for an 18-inch sapling, and their tree is now over 13 feet tall. They were shocked to see it produce male and female cones for the first time. “The long pendulous fruits are actually the male cone and the globular spiky fruits are the female cones,” she said. “So what we’re really hoping later in the year would be to collect and germinate some of the seeds from it. That would be really something but we will just have to wait and see..” The Thompsons had participated in the National Garden Scheme in early May, an event that gives the public access to unique private gardens in the UK to raise money for charity. This allowed people to come see the rare tree in person.
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