EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

World's Rarest Living Fossil Tree

Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis), Family Araucariaceae
Adelaide, South Australia

Explanation:  Just another tree, you say?  Definitively ... not.

This is likely the world's rarest tree in its native habitat.  I was lucky to discover a single planted specimen here in the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide, South Australia.  

This is a Wollemi pine.  It is of the botanic genus Wollemia.  This species is the only living, surviving member of this genus.  And the genus dates back to ... the dinosaurs.  Really ancient dinosaurs.  Dating back 200 million years ago.  

For a very long time, this entire genus of trees was thought to be extinct, until a tiny remnant wild population was discovered in 1994 in a remote canyon of New South Wales.  There, only about 80 mature individuals and maybe a few hundred seedlings of this species still remain.  IUCN ranks the Wollemi pine as Critically Endangered, which is just one step up from being, well, Extinct.  

  

This healthy lone specimen adorns the Botanic Gardens
of Adelaide, South Australia.
Other specimens have been cultivated and are now
distributed in nearly 100 botanic gardens around the world,
helping to safeguard the future of the species,
although not in its native habitat.
    

The tree is named after Wollemi National Park, where it was discovered.  Access there is now severely restricted, even to researchers, to help protect this tiny remnant population of the world's rarest living fossil tree.  

Wollemi pines belong to the family Auricariaceae that includes Norfolk Island pine, kauri, hoop pine, and monkey puzzle tree.  Members of this family of trees are found in New Zealand, Australia, the South Pacific, and South America ... wonderful indicators of the ancient continental drift and plate tectonics that broke apart Pangea into the continents we know today.

And, oh, by the way, the Wollemi pine is not a pine.