In a secret valley full of leeches, spiders and angophoras in the Blue Mountains, scientists are waiting like anxious parents to welcome the birth of a baby pinosaur or two.
Pinosaur is the nickname given by some scientists to the prehistoric and critically endangered Wollemi pine. It was thought to be extinct until 100 of these Jurassic era conifers were found in 1994 in a dark canyon in the Wollemi National Park 150 kms from Sydney. Now an “insurance population” of 191 trees planted six years ago in an undisclosed location – far enough away so one will survive if fire or predators strikes the other grove – is producing fertilised seeds for the first time.
“The good news is that the Wollemi pines are making babies. Just like me,” said Dr Heidi Zimmer, a senior scientist with NSW Environment who is also seven months pregnant.
She's tracked the trees' progress since they were planted as juveniles. This year for the first time, some of the insurance trees have produced fertilised seeds. They're also growing like “Weet-bix kids”, said Dr Zimmer, at about 30cms a year compared to the 1cm rate of those in the original and dark location.
Wollemis have a primitive reproduction system, and the same tree can produce male and female cones. For some years, some of the insurance trees have produced male cones, rather pendulous little things. This year they also produced female cones, which resemble small durians in size and prickliness. In March, these female cones dropped about 60 fertilised seeds, which could produce the next generation. “From seeds, seedlings grow, and that will be the new generation of Wollemi pines,” said Dr Zimmer.
The 1994 discovery of the Wollemi pines was described as “the botanical equivalent of finding a living dinosaur” and a “a quirk of geography” that they survived while the millions that once lived across the northern and southern hemispheres had died.
Their fame brought disease, and hikers desperate to see these Jurassic Park relics infected the trees with a kind of water mould called Phytophthora, which is as deadly as a velociraptor and can kill some native plants in days. The flourishing “insurance population” was a real win for the environment, said NSW Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton.
“It creates a future for something that goes back 200 million years ago. It is a way we can propagate, study and research it,” she said.
Keeping the location secret would help secure the species in the wild, and allow scientists to do more research into “how we can secure this amazing dinosaur tree”.
The recovery plan for the Wollemi was the first to be carried out for an endangered plant species in NSW, said Dr Cathy Offord, the manager of the Australian Plant Bank at the Royal Botanic Garden. This translocation or insurance plan could be used as a model for how to propagate and conserve other threatened plants, such as orchids. “We are on the cusp of a new frontier with reintroducing threatened plant species to the wild.”
This article first appeared on smh.com.au.
