Every wild Wollemi pine is nearly the same tree

A tree known only from fossils turned up alive in an Australian canyon, and its whole wild family shares almost one set of genes.

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In 1994, a park officer named David Noble was canyoning in Wollemi National Park, west of Sydney, and abseiled into a deep sandstone gorge. The odd-looking trees at the bottom turned out to belong to a group scientists knew only from fossils. Botanic Gardens of Sydney describes it as one of the great botanical finds of modern times.

Most wild forests are full of genetic variety, the way no two children in a classroom look quite the same. Wollemi pines are not like that. A 2003 study in *Molecular Ecology* reported exceptionally low genetic variation across the wild trees. A 2023 genome study went further, describing the surviving wild pines as highly inbred and likely clonal, meaning close copies of each other. That matters, because a disease that can kill one tree could probably kill them all.

There are not many to lose. NSW National Parks counts 46 adult trees and 43 juveniles in the wild. Forty-six adults is fewer than the pupils in two ordinary school classes. The species is sold in nurseries now, and if you want to grow a conifer in a pot from the beginning, a bonsai starter kit is the cheap way to learn on something replaceable.

The grove's exact position is a secret, and the reason is mud on boots. A water mould called *Phytophthora cinnamomi*, often called root rot, travels in soil, and NSW National Parks warns that unauthorised visitors could carry it in, as well as trample seedlings and fragile soil. Researchers who do go in follow strict cleaning rules.

The secret was tested in the summer of 2019 to 2020. As the huge Gospers Mountain fire closed in, specialist firefighters were winched down by helicopter to set up an irrigation system, while aircraft dropped retardant ahead of the flames, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Some plants were scorched. The stand survived. Indoors, the limiting factor for any conifer seedling is light, which is what a full spectrum grow light fixes.

What nobody yet knows is how a forest of near-copies will cope with the next hot decade. Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees is a readable way into how forests hold themselves together.