The Wollemia nobilis of Australia have been saved from the raging fires of Australia by special fire crews and air dropped fire retardant in a Top Secret operation.
On the afternoon of October 26, 2019 an unseasonably warm Saturday following a run of hot days, the wind picked up over the Blue Mountains and lightning sparked what was to become the beginning of the biggest forest fire Australia has ever known. One bolt made ground near a densely grown area of the Wollemi National Park.
On January 15, 2020 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that firefighters had saved the Wollemia nobilis trees (commonly called the Wollemi Pine) of the Wollemi Mountains west of Sydney Australia. While most of the Wollemi National Park has been burnt by the fires north-west of Sydney, specialist fire crews managed to ensure the only existing stand of Wollemia nobilis survived.
"It was like a military-style operation," New South Wales Environment Minister Matt Kean told the Herald. "We just had to do everything." Fanned by strong winds and temperatures in the mid-80s the “fire tore towards the coast like a beast on holiday. It was voracious.”
"Wollemi National Park is the only place in the world where these trees are found in the wild and, with less than 200 left, we knew we needed to do everything we could to save them,” Mr. Kean said.
There are fossils of the Wollemia nobilis as well as other Araucariaceae dating from the time of the dinosaurs (245 to 65 million years ago). In 1994 a Wollemia was found in the bottom of a canyon along a stream in Eastern Australia's Blue Mountains growing among flowering trees.
There are two Wollemia nobilis in the Moss Family Temperate Woodland Garden. The first one came as a gift in 2008 from the National Arboretum in Washington DC. It had been acquired from the Sydney Botanical Garden in the first distribution of newly propagated trees. The second came to us in 2016 from a San Francisco Arborist who had received her tree in 2006 as a wedding gift. Both trees have had male cones and the first tree put on female cones in the summer of 2019.
We are grateful for the splendid Wollemia nobilis in the Humboldt Botanical Garden.
Moss Family Temperate Woodland Garden
Humboldt Botanical Garden
at College of the Redwoods
7707 Tompkins Hill Rd, Eureka, CA
