Great post Anne, thank you. We have an old yew in our garden and I have always thought they were berries on it, but I will never make that mistake again! They’re cones, not fruit 😅
As ever it's a pleasure to learn from your wonderful notes on plants - the description and defining details of difference being clarity, and along with your personal preferences (I'm sure that must be frowned on by some!!) bring these growing beings to life for me as an armchair admirer of plantlife, especially of such inaccessible specimens!
Hooray! So glad to hear that. I hope no one would frown too much on spicing up a blog post with favorites and subjectivities, hehe. A scientific paper would be another matter...(sadly...)
Interesting! I wonder if you've heard of wollemia? (known colloquially as 'wollemi pine') - it's a coniferous plant in the Araucariaceae family. It was discovered in Australia as recently as 1994. It's critically endangered - there are believed to be only about 60 adult trees growing wild. Wikipedia says they went through a genetic bottleneck 10,000-26,000 years ago when the population became as low as maybe one or two trees so that all genetic variability was lost.
I met an older gentleman volunteering in Shilstone, Devon’s rural archives, and he told me a story of visiting a Wollemi tree in Australia and bringing a seed back. He now has a fully grown wollemi pine tree growing in his Devon garden, so I guess that is one of the 60 remaining trees? Or perhaps makes it 61?! I got goosebumps when he was telling me his story, he was so passionate about tree conservation.
Amazing! Fortunately there are a lot more than 60 trees existing in cultivation around the world because of people like him! But they aren’t part of a wild, evolving population like those remaining trees—which I also heard were jeopardized by the fires a few years back but were saved.
I have heard of Wollemia, definitely a cool weirdo! I considered including it but was short on space. Wollemia was one of the stars of the "global conservation" part of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden tour I used to give, since they had a couple of specimens (although part of the story was that the smaller, sadder specimen had been damaged--lost its apical meristem when a kid jumped on it...)
Great post Anne, thank you. We have an old yew in our garden and I have always thought they were berries on it, but I will never make that mistake again! They’re cones, not fruit 😅
Haha glad you enjoyed it, and to be fair those yew cones do act like fruit! But I think it’s cool to know the full story.
As ever it's a pleasure to learn from your wonderful notes on plants - the description and defining details of difference being clarity, and along with your personal preferences (I'm sure that must be frowned on by some!!) bring these growing beings to life for me as an armchair admirer of plantlife, especially of such inaccessible specimens!
Hooray! So glad to hear that. I hope no one would frown too much on spicing up a blog post with favorites and subjectivities, hehe. A scientific paper would be another matter...(sadly...)
Interesting! I wonder if you've heard of wollemia? (known colloquially as 'wollemi pine') - it's a coniferous plant in the Araucariaceae family. It was discovered in Australia as recently as 1994. It's critically endangered - there are believed to be only about 60 adult trees growing wild. Wikipedia says they went through a genetic bottleneck 10,000-26,000 years ago when the population became as low as maybe one or two trees so that all genetic variability was lost.
I met an older gentleman volunteering in Shilstone, Devon’s rural archives, and he told me a story of visiting a Wollemi tree in Australia and bringing a seed back. He now has a fully grown wollemi pine tree growing in his Devon garden, so I guess that is one of the 60 remaining trees? Or perhaps makes it 61?! I got goosebumps when he was telling me his story, he was so passionate about tree conservation.
Amazing! Fortunately there are a lot more than 60 trees existing in cultivation around the world because of people like him! But they aren’t part of a wild, evolving population like those remaining trees—which I also heard were jeopardized by the fires a few years back but were saved.
https://theconversation.com/wollemi-pines-are-dinosaur-trees-98160
I have heard of Wollemia, definitely a cool weirdo! I considered including it but was short on space. Wollemia was one of the stars of the "global conservation" part of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden tour I used to give, since they had a couple of specimens (although part of the story was that the smaller, sadder specimen had been damaged--lost its apical meristem when a kid jumped on it...)
🙌🏼 Brava👏 Really enjoyed this episode! I find it absolutely very interesting.
So glad to hear that, Luca! Thanks for reading!