Posted on 09/17/2023 11:05:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Wollemi pine was thought to have gone extinct 2 million years ago... In 1994, hikers discovered a group of strange trees growing in a canyon in Wollemi National Park, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Sydney, Australia. One hiker notified a park service naturalist, who then showed leaf specimens to a botanist. It was ultimately determined they represented an ancient species that had been essentially frozen in time since dinosaurs roamed Earth.
Called a "living fossil" by some, the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) is nearly identical to preserved remains dating to the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). There are now just 60 of these trees in the wild — and these tenacious survivors are threatened by bushfires in the region. It was thought to have gone extinct around 2 million years ago...
The pine has 26 chromosomes — containing a staggering 12.2 billion base pairs. In comparison, humans have only around 3 billion base pairs...
Indeed, the plants do not exchange much genetic material. The remaining trees appear to reproduce mostly by cloning themselves through coppicing — in which suckers emerge from the base and become new trees.
Their rarity may be partly due to the high number of transposons, or "jumping genes" — stretches of DNA that can change their position within the genome. These elements also account for the genome's size...
As transposons leap to new locations, they can change the sequence of "letters" in a DNA molecule, thus causing or reversing mutations in genes. They may carry functional DNA with them or alter DNA at the site of insertion, and thus have a substantial impact on the evolution of an organism.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
There’s some unusual and confusing things out there, with overlap in warm/cold zones, and I’m still figuring it out. It just takes time and research.
Asian Pine Beetles.
Destroyed many forests in Western USA and is the genesis for the fuel in the terrible wildfires seen in the last 20 years.
Oh, yeah. Those are all over, not just the Pacific NW. They are a big problems in the South too. I thought they came from Japan? In Alabama would they are called Japanese Pine Beatles. A very destructive insect. Assuming they are the same bug.
Our street was lined with Chestnut Trees and provided a wonderful canopy. The last of them IIRC was killed by an arborist who was “saving them”. That was along time ago..in the mid 1980s.
It looks a lot like a metasequoia another “ancient” tree.
My family owns a nursery in Maryland that has been in business for 95 years. My Grandfather received one of these from a USDA program that got them from pre-war China. Planted in the backyard it was easily 50’ when I was a kid and easy to climb.
Back when I was younger and ambitious and living in the local metropolis, I fooled around with gardening, and tried Siberian kiwi (actinidia). It arrived bare root and should have been fine, but it never budded.
Outside Bessey Hall at MSU there was a tree, offspring of a single living specimen found by a British exploration of the Chinese interior. To keep the species viable, various colleges and whatnot cultivated it all over the world, and MSU has a beautiful campus, thanks to its roots as an ag school.
Thanks PfSM.
When I was a kid mu Grandfather gave me a Franklina. When I moved away I wonder what happened to it.
Okay, I won’t but evolution is a fact.
Both varieties — Actinidia deliciosa and Actinidia arguta — take 3-5yrs — to bud and fruit. I naver had luck with them here in South Central PA, but they do grow nicely in the Baltimore area and south, seems like.
Did yours just not grow at all, after you planted it?
I got bupkis. :^(
I think it might not have gotten *enough* water on a regular basis, to re-hydrate it. The soil around any plant will suck water from whatever has water, to hydrate itself, and BRs will not do well, unless they get excess water to compensate for that ‘sponge action’ by surrounding soil and plants.
I always plant BR (bare root) plants in a small pot, to get them ‘started’, keep in the shade, and then transplant to the garden after they show good signs of life. Try it again, and be sure to get it in the Spring, as that’s optimum time to plant BR material.
Thx.
You sly dog.
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