The Wollemi Pine

The Wollemi Pine is a survivor from the Age of the Dinosaurs. A miraculous time traveller and one of the greatest botanical discoveries of the twentieth century.

Wollemi Pines are remarkable and intriguing in the way they grow, each one unique. They still surprise the horticulturalists that have studied and now propagate them. This tree will exhibit many fascinating changes as the seasons pass and as it matures. You can look forward to the formation of the strange ‘polar’ caps and, in time, see its extraordinary bubbly bark, as well as variations in its beautiful prehistoric foliage.

So, how was this relic from the Jurassic era found? How has it survived and lay hidden for so long?

The Wollemi National Park is a vast expanse of over 500,000 hectares. A wilderness and world heritage area just a few hours drive from Sydney. A place where a walker could hike for weeks without seeing another person; where cast galleries of prehistoric rock art are still being discovered today. Countless streams have carved out a network of canyons in the landscape, some as deep as the Empire State Building is tall. This is a place many scientists dream about visiting, with an abundance of new species of plants and animals to discover.

On September 10th, 1994, a park ranger and avid bushwalker named David Noble was exploring canyons in the Wollemi National Park. The grove where Noble found himself after many difficult abseils was different to others that he had explored before. It somehow resembled a tiny remnant from the time of Gondwana – when the Australasian continent was still fused to what is now Antarctica.

That day, he was to discover a bizarre tree that he had not seen before with leaves shaped like a Stegosaur’s tail and bark that looked like bubbling chocolate.

Noble collected a section of foliage to show his colleagues at the New South WalesNational Parks and Wildlife Service. Botanist Wyn Jones thought it looked like a piece of fern. ‘No’ Noble told him. ‘it’s a great big tree.’

The rush to identify the tree led to a small team headed by Jones, his colleague Jan Allan, and Ken Hill, conifer expert at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney. They declared it a part of the same family as the Monkey Puzzle and Norfolk Island Pine. The tree, by that time dubbed ‘The Wollemi Pine’, was however so different from all other trees in the family Araucariaceae that it was pronounced a completely new genus. The botanical name bestowed on it was Wollemia nobilis – honouring both the park where the tree was

found and its discoverer, David Noble.

As the Wollemi Pine made headlines in newspapers around the world, questions soon followed. What were the origins of this huge tree? How had it remained hidden for so long and most importantly, what was a desperately endangered conifer doing in a national park, famous for its vast forests of gum trees that are prone to bush fire every summer?

Scientists now believe that, as Australia dried out over millennia, the range of the Wollemi Pine shrank until the entire population had retreated to the single canyon system in Wollemi National Park. Since 1994, after years of subsequent searches, fewer that 100 adults have been found in the wild.

Soon after the discovery a decision was made to keep the location of the trees – only two dozen adult trees were known at this time – a closely guarded secret to protect them from collectors, vandals and possible plant diseases. It is a policy still in place today.

Wollemi Pine seeds and cuttings were collected from the grove so a population could be established outside the canyon, as an insurance policy against any disaster. The initial propagation was undertaken by Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, which has since been contracted out to Wollemi Australia, a partnership between Queensland DPI (Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries) Forestry group and Birkdale Nursery. Every Wollemi Pine sold returns royalty to conserve the Wollemi and other threatened Australian plant species. This ensures that anyone who buys a Wollemi Pine will be playing a part in the global conservation effort.

After propagation, the trees are now sent all over the world for growing on into pots. Kernock Park Plants, Cornwall has the responsibility to continue this conservation effort in the UK and Ireland. Although the Wollemi Pine is one of the most threatened plants on Earth, it is highly versatile and easy to grow. It tolerates heat, cold, full sun and shade, as well as different types of soils. It is the ultimate survivor, having outlived both dinosaurs and many of its contemporaries in the plant kingdom.