Writer Learns To Love
Prehistoric Houseplant
By Chris Costanzo

This is Chris Costanzo's Wollemi Pine tree. The plant, which thrived when the dinosaurs were alive, was long thought to be extinct. But it isn't. (Herald photo / Chris Costanzo)

Over the past year I have become emotionally involved with a house plant. A pre-historic houseplant.

I hadn’t planned on it, but my feelings crept up on me slowly to the point that I now look at her a lot, and care deeply for her welfare. Frankly, I’ve grown to love her.

Wilma is a Wollemi pine. She’s a plant that was long thought to be extinct.

From fossil evidence it’s known that the Wollemi pine lived and thrived over 90 million years ago, during what is known as the Cretaceous Period, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, and it was widely distributed, even thriving in Antarctica.

It survived through later geological periods after radical temperature changes had killed off the dinosaurs, and when mammals developed on our planet. But the most recent fossils of the plant date to about two million years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch, leaving no evidence of its existence after then and indicating that it became extinct around that time.

Certainly nobody knew of anything like it during historical times. It had been a distinctive plant, which in its day grew as high as 140 feet with a three-foot trunk and a funny bark covered with blisters and bubbles like a thick boiling dark liquid, but with leaves that looked a bit like fern.

Nevertheless, it produced cones, but unlike most conifers, which produce a single trunk, this plant was capable of spreading and producing scores of trunks. The plant belonged to the ancient conifer family Araucariacea, which was known from the Triassic Period, more than 200 million years ago, some of whose subspecies still survive today, even though this particular prehistoric plant did not.

Momentous Discovery

Or so they thought. Then in 1994, a lone hiker came upon two specimens of the plant in a deep and almost inaccessible gorge in Australia’s million-acre Wollemi National Park. He didn’t know what they were, so he brought a branch back to a laboratory where it was identified and later given the scientific name Wollemi nobilis—or, informally, Wollemi pine.

Subsequent searches in the area over the past several years have uncovered only about 100 specimens—all with absolutely identical DNA, which suggests that they are from a single tree that somehow survived during the eons since the Pleistocene period.

The re-discovery of the Wollemi pine has been called the greatest botanical event in history, akin to finding a living dinosaur. The location of the surviving specimens has been kept secret, to keep the public and commercial opportunists from intruding in their habitat and thereby altering the delicate environment which has somehow allowed the Wollemi pine, one of the rarest and oldest plants in the world, to survive.

Wilma Arrives in Bethel

About a year ago I acquired a seven-inch live Wollemi pine cutting taken from one of the wild specimens. It came already sprouted in a small pot. I transplanted it to a much larger container in my home. It has since doubled in height and is already showing some of its particular characteristics.

If you prune it, as I’ve done, it soon sprouts a new twig from the cut, and this trait might have helped it survive physical trauma over the ages.

The new twigs do not grow straight out from the cut, but grow at a slight angle, giving the plant a wild, unkempt bushy look that is further emphasized by the Wollemi’s tendency to develop multiple stems (and eventually multiple trunks).

Although my particular plant is still small, and stands forlorn in an oversized container by my bedroom window, there is an inspiring and majestic quality in how its baby branches have spread out and reached up for air and light, as if luxuriating in its rebirth, and refusing to be deterred from life.

Literature on the Wollemi pine states that it produces three types of foliage, depending on its age and position on the tree. As a juvenile plant, my Wilma (the name I've given her) produces a single row of light green leaves on its twig.

As she gets older, the leaves will turn a darker blue-green, and as a mature plant (about 10 years old) she will produce two rows of leaves on a branch, giving her a spiny and pre-historic appearance. When Wilma finally becomes mature, she will also develop the cones that make her a conifer.

When the air gets cold, Wilma’s buds, which in warmer weather will produce the multiple stems, exude clear liquid droplets. I'm told that this liquid turns into a waxy "snow" at lower temperatures, and serves to protect the bud somewhat from more severe cold. That, too, undoubtedly helped it survive.

Scientists are certain that the Wollemi can endure seasonal temperature drops as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit, with perhaps occasional plunges to 10 degrees, which means that an established plant can grow outdoors in some areas of the United States, although not in Vermont.

The Wollemi can survive indefinitely in a pot indoors, as long as it’s kept watered and is placed near a window where it can get light. It can be kept to a manageable size and shape by pruning.

My Wilma is definitely a low maintenance plant. I water her once a week, and in the winter I occasionally move her to different windows to maximize her exposure to brighter light (although they don't recommend too much intense sunlight for a juvenile Wollemi).

Wilma won’t add new growth until the spring. She knows the time to do it by the lengthening of the days. Last year, sometime in April, she suddenly began to develop buds, followed by several spurts of growth until the fall. Wilma is now twelve inches high and requires nothing of me except my loving assurances of water and light. I expect new growth of six to eight inches this year, which I will help along by feeding her some growth hormone powder every few months along with a bit of plant food.

Anybody can acquire and grow a Wollemi pine, thanks to the efforts of an international consortium of scientific and environmental groups bent on preserving this rarest of plants by making cuttings available to the public. Your own Wollemi will provide you with an unusual and distinctive plant that will serve as a constant reminder of the beauty, continuity and fragility of our planet. And you too might become emotionally involved with her.

SIDEBAR:

How To Get

Your Own Tree

Costanzo obtained his Wollemi pine last year at this time through the National Geographic Society, which is the main distributor in the United States. Find the offering at www.shop.nationalgeographic.com.

It costs $99.95, and they add a special $5 fee for rushing it fresh in special packing, as well as a normal shipping charge.

Proceeds go to the Wollemi conservation effort. The plant comes with a detailed booklet.