Wollemi Pine

Wollemi Pine Wollemia nobilis is a living fossil, discovered as recently as 1994 and only growing in the wild in three remote locations in a National Park 150 kilometres north-west of Sydney. It is a member of the Araucariaceae family which includes Monkey Puzzles and Norfolk Pines, but is the only living example of its genus. Related plants have been found as fossils.

A young Wollemi Pine photographed by me in 2003, in a protective cage to prevent theft in the Botanical Gardens, Canberra.

 

The wild trees have been cloned and are now propogated under licence as part of a funding scheme for their conservation. Happily they've turned out to be extremely resilient in terms of temperature tolerances and will take quite cold weather, so are thriving in botanical gardens from Inverewe in Scotland to Melbourne in south-east Australia. There is one in the gardens of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Only about a hundred individuals survive in the wild, and they are slow growing and extremely long lived. 

The species is threatened by virtue of the small size of its population and lack of genetic diversity. They are vulnerable to infection by the waterborn mould Phytophthora cinnamomi, an aggressive tree pathogen which is believed to have been introduced to the wild population by unauthorised human visitors carrying it in the soil on their boots. The wild trees also had a close shave during the dreadful 2019-20 bushfires, but the specialist team of firefighters sent in to save them were successful.

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UPDATE -- RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

chm -- I didn't know there were so many species in New Caledonia. There are a good half dozen in Australia. But it's not a big family even so. The most interesting thing is the distribution, as they are one of the families that survived after Australia split from South America. So they are Gondwanan in distribution.