By Lauren Leicht
Trees as old as dinosaurs are rooted here in the Gateway City. The Wollemi pine, a member of a 200-million-year-old plant family, was thought extinct until bushwalker David Noble discovered a collection of them in Wollemi National Park, just outside Sydney, Australia, a decade ago.
Fewer than 100 of these ancient trees are known to grow in the wild, and only a handful of gardens around the world are cultivating them.
Last November, the Missouri Botanical Garden became the first of three locations in the United States—the others are the Smithsonian Institution and San Francisco’s Strybing Arboretum—to receive the pines. Local green thumbs can look forward to adding the pines to their gardens late this year. For more information about the Wollemi (its name is Aboriginal and means “look around you”) visit www.wollemipine.com.
