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September 29, 2007

You can grow your own 'fossil pine'

Garden bloggers worldwide email me to offer their blogs for the Garden Blogs list.

Last week, Maureen Mc Ilwain wrote to tell me that

Kingsbrae Gardening is the staff blog of Kingsbrae Garden, a 27-acre public garden in St Andrews by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, Canada, home of Canada’s first “Jurassic living fossil” wollemi pine.

I wrote back,

Can I grow my own fossil? (:

Maureen replied,

Actually, you can grow your own wollemi, which we bill as the “Jurassic living fossil” tree; just $150 and it’s yours! We bought two for the Gdn to do hardiness trials on, since they’ve only proven hardy to -20 so far, and even that is iffy. We wouldn’t want to endanger our prize specimen! You just go to wollemipine.com and click on Canada/USA and there you are.

Here it is, and it's $99:

Wollemi Pine Tree - USA Only Save a pine tree for only ... $99.

(The $149 is for Canadians.)

The Wollemi was discovered in 1994 in Australia. Fewer than 100 trees live in the wild -- their exact location in the Wollemi National Forest (map) is kept secret to preserve them -- and these are grown from cuttings. For more plant details, start here. All the top links lead to interesting information.

The bark is interesting:

There are more photos on this page. I'd suggest Paula adopt one for her city landscaping, but it grows up to 130 feet tall. It can be kept in a pot indefinitely on a patio, though,. and is hardy to -12.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 9:41 PM | Permalink

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Bare Bones Gardener | October 1, 2007 6:57 AM link

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