Bonzer Words!: The Bequest Of Nature - The Wollemi Pine
...Now you can go into any nursery and order a tree whose ancestors were living on the planet in the Jurassic period. And this with as much fuss as you would buy a geranium....
Sonia Inczedy tells of the rediscovery of the Wollemi Pine.
Nature has bequeathed to the planet a miracle of survival hidden from us for millions of years. Some time ago, in 1994 to be precise, a bushwalker who was also a botanist discovered hidden deep in a gorge in the Blue Mountains a fabulous tree thought to be extinct for eons. Imagine, less than 200 kilometres from bustling noisy Sydney stood a tree whose ancestors grew when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
The tree was named the Wollemi Pine after the area in which it was found. Previously the only trace of this pine was in fossil records going back 90 million years. They found that it was related to the Kauri, the Norfolk Island Pine and the Monkey Puzzle Tree.
After the excitement of finding this marvellous plant, the botanists decided to keep its location secret for its own safety. It is a sad indictment of the human race that people would want to make money from a rare plant. They would think nothing of digging up the tree and selling it to some unscrupulous collector, even if in doing so the plant died.
Realising that it was only the rarity of the plant that put it in danger, scientists set about propagating as many trees as they could. Taking tiny pieces of the original plant they cloned literally hundreds of trees and placed them in secret locations around the country, hoping they would grow successfully. And they did. Soon there were Wollomi Pines growing happily just about everywhere.
Now you can go into any nursery and order a tree whose ancestors were living on the planet in the Jurassic period. And this with as much fuss as you would buy a geranium.
Imagine my amazement and delight, while wandering around a garden centre last year, I saw about fifty Wollomis for sale for the princely sum of $22.00 each.
When every day of our lives we seem to be bombarded with news of wars, global warming, droughts and so on, isn't wonderful to hear such a positive story?
© Sonia Inczedy
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Sonia writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
