Australia's Dinosaur Trees are Thriving in Britain - here's why 

Thank you for telling this story! Future generations will love you for your work.

You mean that Arson the law caught 184 Arsonists and the TV called it climate change? Try telling the truth.

"Wollum eye"

Pronounce by us Aussies just like like Bond-eye, err Bondi.

Gotta think why were there so few sites left. Fire stick hunting practices of the Australian Aboriginal people had a lot to do with it . Something alot of us who have been wandering around those canyons since the eighties have noticed is that those canyons don't look like they've been burnt out for eons.

Its not monoculture. The wollemi pines are all natural clones because of genetic bottle neck and they have no defences against any modern pathogens. Also the location is dangerous to get too. The location is secret because the general public will be hurt getting to the site and will introduce a pathogen that will destroy the remaining adults as explained in the video.

More than 'only a few'. I have met 2 random people who know where they are, and have visited them in the wild.

Whines the australian guy with the bushcraft channel😂

apparently they sold it outside of Australia 1st, to keep control of the sale of it

Unfortunately many people visit without authorisation. In fact pathogens have been introduced by people who have not taken proper sanitary precautions.

Imagine how much good we could do if we just payed attention. We're such a weird species, lol.

First time ever hearing about them. Very cool. Can only state the obvious. Look like a fir tree from far away but like a fern up close. Good luck, amazing tree. ♥️👍

@@tosgem Oh thank you!

@@tdb7992 you're welcome. I will now delete my comment

I remember my father telling me about them when I was very young and that he had bought a sapling to try and grow on our block in the Northern Territory, unfortunately we had about a 3 year drought right about a year after planting and it didn't make it through till the next full wet season and died. Beautiful little bugger though

Awesome!! Curious, are they readily available throughout Australia?

​@@LeaveCurious You can pretty much buy them in most decent/specialised nurseries. Prices will vary depending on the age of the plant. Some people grow them in pots.

@@LeaveCurious got mine through Garden Express on-line, they have different sizes.

💚

Maybe try to replicate the plant diversity that exists in the remaining niche? The right tree in the right place is often ignored & trees without supporting plant diversity often results in eventual failure.. Maybe add a couple of the beautiful Bunya Pines if you like to plan hundreds of years ahead !

Those fires were started by the Aboriginals who burnt Australia to a crisp repeatedly in a lazy effort to flush out animals to eat. They really did ruin the environment.

I live near some temperate rainforest in Victoria mostly mountain ash gum trees but some pockets of Gondwanan sections in remote gully’s

it’s all the aboriginal’s fire stick farming that destroyed australia’s ancient forests

@@Slavicplayer251 they cleared some of the drier forests into plans and rotated to move animals around, but wetter forests were inhabited less especially in Victoria and Tasmania’s where they avoided Temperate rainforests and did not burn or even use them

@@DeclanStrong-bk9yw western australia’s coast was sub-tropical and tropical rainforest 45,000 years ago now it’s arid desert

They do very well in Southern California. Nurseries sell them for landscaping. They're very easy to grow from cuttings with a little rooting hormone and some moist plant-starter medium.

@@CricketsBay this is great. The more people that grow them, the less likely they are to disappear again. They'll find new natural niches going forward as well.

Hope you have a massive backyard 😉

@@adypowell7759 small, but lots of sky! Wollemi pines are quite narrow 🤓

I think millenia is a way way way way way understatement.

A botanical Jurassic Park would be a great idea!

Well, limit it to a park, but there's no place for it in a country like ours that has precious little enough pure native woodland and meadow. These are interesting curiosities, but I don't like the idea of starting to plant forests of this stuff. Our native wildlife may not be able to 'use' it any real way, and such forests may be as devoid of native life as a spruce forest. It's easy to get 'carried away' by such curiosities as trees like these. I have been guilty of doing the exact same thing in my younger days, and have planted up gardens with absurd numbers of what we gardeners call 'Plantsman's Plants.' Yes, very nice to show these things off to a fellow horticulturalist or botanist who would appreciate the rarity of what they're looking at. But, quite honestly, these pines look as out of place in this setting as council-maintained, 'lollipop' trees locked in pavements along a city street. Stick to the plan, and concentrate on helping your own local environment, adding appropriate plants to your garden that will benefit the fauna that really needs them and really appreciates them, paying you back in wild encounters. The pines will be a flash in the pan, appearing in gardens everywhere - much like Ginkgos and Monkey Puzzles - and then they become a little bit of a joke when the fashion is over. Leave the conservation to the right people in the right country to restore their environment. We've got enough work to do. Plus these things cost £80 each. Just think of the number of wild flowers and native trees you can buy to kit out your own garden with that sort of money! Just think of all the 'extra' creatures you can help by spending wisely instead of getting lured by a fad.

There are a lot of living plant species that resemble Jurassic or Cretaceous fossil flora. Flowering plants diversified pretty quickly in the mid Cretaceous, so you could include laurels, holly and beech, among others.

Wollemi are related to monkey puzzles

@@Debbie-henricalm down man these are being grown for conservation efforts

Keep it secret, keep it safe

Maintain secrecy brother. Not being rude, I apologize, but maybe delete your comment.

No it's well-known that Katoomba, where the OP lived and I live, is in the Blue Mountains where this tree was discovered. The Blue Mountains is a gigantic area and the tree was found in the Wollemi National Park here (hence its name). The comment should remain.

I was also living in Katoomba at the time. We had Blues Cafe. Small world.

you mean wollemy(ai)/wollemai, this is even a more accurate pronunciation

@@homebrandrulesmost English speakers know how “eye” is pronounced and it is only pronounced one way. “Ai” Is pronounced in more than one way depending on the word. For example, in Shanghai, it is like “eye” but not in “main” which is pronounced the same as “mane”.

Wollum-eye is correct. That is all.

@@brucetownsend691our tree and the way we pronounce it is the correct way. We speak Australian English, the supreme and superior of all English dialects. So get with the program Pom, pronounced as an eye!😂😂

Look at thes losers arguing about pronunciation😂

Pause at 5:15

@@wyattgrose6439thanks

Someone didn't watch the entire video

It is not worth mentioning because it is not true. Even if they all descend from a single individual thousands of years ago, that wouldn't make them genetically identical. If you have children, they are not genetically identical (unless they are monozygotic twins, monozygotic triplets etc.). The scientists involved in preservation of Wollemi pines are working to preserve the existing genetic diversity of the species. The fact that so far 137 people have liked your comment is a sad reflection on the low level of education on biology in the world.

@@adamk.7177​​⁠Actually you are incorrect. The individuals in the wild are all genetically indistinguishable. However, humans have artificially created three different genetic lines.

You are right... But trees can be invasive.. Apparently the Stika Spruce is invasive in Scotland..

Yeah it’s best to grow native or near native in your garden. Conservation without serious research can lead to invasive species.

Britain's plundering of the globe also brought lots to your country .much of it through force.

Unfortunately most dont have deep enough roots to survive here. To much wind

@@brentmiller3951Cry lol

Im glad someone mentioned the dawn redwood , I’ve planted one in my garden here in SW france.

Umbrella pine is another one. They date back to 230 million years in the fossil record.

I have one! A university nursery was test trialing them and sent me one in 1987. An arborist came by last month while on another job and said in his whole career he had only ever seen one other one in person. Mine is about 80’ tall now with a wonderfully folded and wrinkly trunk. St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Oh boy, another white nationalist advocating for the separation and perpetuation of his race. Cant wait for the rant about how mixed race children are a "sin".

My Dawn Redwood is 25 years old now. I’m a bit worried that it’s going to be too close to the house in 100 years but I guess that’s someone else’s problem.

How lucky to have found something new on this planet! What a feeling

I listen to loads of Australians say wollemEYE 👀& I still get it wrong 😂🙏

No worries

👍yes, so annoying

@@LeaveCurious they speak differently in Melbourne! In NSW we call them Wollim👁️ pine 🌲.

@@LeaveCurious who cares if you get it wrong, darling? You do a great job. I just thought I would let you know because you seemed interested. (I don’t expect to speak English names of things without my own Aussie spin, either . Lol. ). All good, mate

Mother Britain has dementia and needs to go into a nursing home.🤭

Wow trees are amazing 💚 hopefully they’ll go for another 200 million years

But these trees are the champions of hide and seek.

Conifers in general are a very old group of plants which haven't undergone a great deal of diversification. Which is not surprising given they reproduce fairly slowly and tend to be resilient in growth long-term

and they are also growing really well in britain:) along with many other weird and rare species.

@@LeaveCurious They were the most common tree found in North America during the Cretaceous period, but currently are only found on a strip of coastal land from Big Sur to Southwest Oregon. Their ability to grow in extremely rugged terrain saved the last of them from logging, but those are threatened by climate change as our local foggy coast has become more clear and sunny over the last twenty years.

The National Arboretum in Canberra has over 100 forests of rare and endangered species, it includes the Wollemi pine and its edible nut bearing cousins from Brazil, Chile and Bunya Mountains in S/E Queensland, a fascinating reminder of the days before the ancient, massive continent of Gondwana split into its component parts.

They are proper leafy dinosaurs 🦖

Record low at Wollemi National Park -4°C.

England doesn't really have much in the way of winter.

It just rains in the UK, doesn’t actually get that cold and snow

I lived in Surrey as a child in the 1950/60's, and frequently got deep snow. Have lived in Australia since 1964. I remember the fear of the wildfire near the Woolemi pines...terrible time.

Me, my mates and curators of public gardens in Brisbane have all lost them. They don’t seem to survive hot and humid. Seem to go well in places like Melbourne (oceanic climate like UK) and west of the ranges of southern Queensland (mild semi-arid) from what I’ve witnessed

Why doesn't that surprise me, I moved from NSW to Qld in 2007 & couldn't believe the backward stupidity of the government up here, all these years later its not better... sigh, pity we cant put politicians on the endangers species list, THAT would solve many of this countries problems.

Insane.

if pine needs a wet enviroment the uk is the right place

It is called coordinated scarcity, if the market gets flooded with them then the price will drop and they won't get their BMW motorcars and such from the profits.. I would bet someone got a patent on the things and wanted a huge cut of the money..

They were deliberately mass cultivated and distributed to garden stores. The idea was to make them so common and prolific that it would deter people from attempting to poach them from the wild

@@BramBiesiekierski Good plan. Love nature, not to death.

They actually need our absence. They have survived for millions of years without us.

@@fugawiaus if it wasn't for the work they put in to save them from the fires, the only ones left would be in gardens like this one. 😔

@@jaalittle2814 it’s in the blue mountains area that has burned almost annually for a million plus years. That’s a lot of fires WE didn’t put out. How on earth did they survive without us? (Being sarcastic)

@@fugawiaus because the ravine they live in has rainforest trees, which, like Wollemi's are fire sensitive. If there had been a fire there before, they would all be dead

@@jaalittle2814 let me repeat, millions of years of bushfires much worse than anything today have been through the entire blue mountains and Wollemi. They have survived bushfires again and again and again through the entire area they were found in. Is it your position that there was never a single bush fire before we discovered the ravine??

No real word on anyone in Northern California, Oregon or Washington trying to grow a valley or hillside of these.. But at $80 a pop and the threat of being sued if they reproduce without paying a fee for each new tree/plant to the patent holders seems to be part of the snag.. Same can be said for Chestnut trees and Ash trees, there always seems to be people like parasites looking to get cash..

Wow - amazing it survived ! Thanks for growing one ! 🦘

Just checked, and Inverewe gardens actually already have a few specimens.

They grow really well on the west coast of Scotland thats where I live and I have two in my garden, also there is a whole grove of them at Crarae garden near Inveraray the environment is spot on they love the rain 😃

Nice to see such a stand of these trees. And yes, buying a Wollemi might well help keep them surviving. Well done arboretum, and presenter.

Yes, I saw the Inverewe Garden collection of Wollemi pipes just a few weeks ago.

The good news is that new variations of plants do still happen when a cosmic ray or stellar radiation or cross pollination glitch hits the right plant genome at the right time.. Most end up being non-viable mutations but every so often we get a new variety..

They’re amazing that’s for sure

Sounds like the 'beefcake' of trees.... It's mind-boggling that anything was able to reduce their numbers to a (pretty much extinct) miniscule amount of survivors. But I'm happy to hear we can plant some on our property here in Midwest US...

Can you name a seller in the US. Preferably on the East Coast? I've been looking for a sapling for years without any success. There was one person in Washington selling seeds, but that site seems to be defunked.

Heh, I would be interested as well. I have 42 acres of forest with some terraced microbiomes that are practically mini-rain forests (very damp, very isolated from people, maybe gets below freezing for 2-3 days a year). If they are not violating some sort of USDA regulation I would put out a dozen or so and give them a few acres.

@@TishaHayes Plant Delights online nursery has them from time to time.

@@Duamerthrax Online at Plant Delights nursery; USA.

The city planning departments in the Omaha Metro Area luv the Ginkgo too. Until a female Ginkgo flowers and sets seed, then drops nasty-smelling gunk all over the sidewalk when the seeds ripen in the Fall. It smells worse than dog crap. Less than 1 in 100 landscaping Ginkos is female in this area now.

@@CricketsBay I have read about that and have two which are not mature enough so may get my punishment for liking them. They are stunning in early spring and autumn though.

Yes, in the U.S., 99% of Wollemi Pines are clones. They're very easy to grow from cuttings.

They are all genetically identical, the video maker was obviously unaware of that fact.

Bunya Mt is my favorite place close to Brisbane, the Bunya Pines are so old and tall there, it's like walking into a cathedral walking among them.

Yes the Bunya pine, the monkey puzzle tree and the hoop pine and kauri pines are all from the same family

Wollemi Pines grow from cuttings pretty easily. A little rooting hormone and some moist plant-starter medium is all it takes.

Catalpa (aka Catawba) trees get that tall in 5 years or less. Giant trees with white flowers and huge leaves.

It is an arboretum, not a wild forest.

Enjoy your bridge, troll.

@@MP-uw1qc would be nice to have a ground cover though.

Wool isn't right, it's wahl

Or “wol”. We’re not talking about Wollongong (pronounced like “wool-n-gong”), we’re talking about Wollemi (pronounced like “wol-m-eye”). Note the difference. Ask any Sydneysider to pronounce the name of the big national park west of the Putty Road where these pine trees come from.

Any other redundant and useless topics you three would like to waste time arguing about?

@user-cd9zp5tn7s i suggested places close to where it is now because it has a possibility to become invasive especially if it does exceptionally well in that climate. and in australia there is still potential that an animal can feed of the tree and keep it in check

@user-cd9zp5tn7s and also i meant planting in forest and in the wilderness instead of parks. also it’s very dangerous to introduce plants that have had zero contact before hand with the ecosystem. and why would we want britain full of a tree from subtropical australia anyway? it undermines the beauty of natural britain

@@caracaracoral9847 not likely to be an invasive too specialist.

@@caracaracoral9847 If the Wollemi Pines became invasive, that would be good because it means the species is surviving.

​​@@LadyAlriandi Thatis not true ^ while it would be greatfor the Wollemi Pine to have its numbers boosted through being kept in properly enclosed spaces, it is NEVER a good thing if a species becomes invasive in the ecosystem it enters. Imagine how horrible it would be if the tree that was once known for its absolute uniqueness and beauty becomes known as another example of "That really frustrating invasive plant"? There would be a constant effort to get rid of it, rather than foster it.

Yeah sorry I do make mistakes! Never any shortage of knowledge in the comments 🤟

The rocks are jurassic

The bottom of the valley is permian, the top is jurassic, most of it is triassic and there was formerly a layer of ironstone across the top of the lot which is now almost completed eroded away.

I believe they’re hard to come by, especially here in the UK - take a look on google depending on where you live

You can keep then in pots and they are in commercial chain stores in Australia, should be available over time.

I have planted several of these trees. They all died. In my opinion they are not hardy at all.

@@lenipr1 What is your soil type and climate. ?

Nurseries and landscaping centers in the U.S. sell Wollemi Pines. They're pretty easy to order online too.

@@CricketsBay Thank you. I will have to look into that.

I didn’t say where to get them from, as it’ll vary depending on where you’re from - a search online should hold the answers

1:52 and even when you search for "dinosaur tree" it will come up. And then you search for buying or ordering.

Here let me help you,- I know how to use Google! I KNOW it's hard but I'm an expert 😊 😁 Wollemia nobilis is the tree you are looking for. • go to Google • Use your keyboard and put in the following letters - W o l l e m i a • Make a space then put in- For sale. • Press "search" You will then get a NEW PAGE! These are the results 😊 Check the results for Wollemia trees that would fit your budget 🎉 Hope That Helps💥👋🏿👍🏿

Wollemi pines. Took me exactly 10 seconds to google. How long did it take you to complain? As if you are owed. Tsk

@az55544: Every little helps what? It takes seconds to find the information you complain about.

Yes, I'd read about related species.

They are distant cousins from distant times.