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| Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) - Amsterdam. Getting this picture was my second Wollemi experience. |
Why this crazed desire to possess one or two of the noble Wollemi? I guess it’s because everybody loves a survivor. If you don’t believe that then explain to me “Lost” where a heterogeneous collection of individuals and beings end up as castaways on a mysterious island that chaotically cavorts through time and space like your average subatomic particle. And humor me further by explaining to me these idiotic “reality (...really?) shows” where various samples of the human race elect to make fools/heroes of themselves to their viewers by playing survivor games on an island, in a wilderness, in a house, on a boat, on a Donald Trump set or some damned thing like that.
By the way, what was the mental makeup of the imaginary character, who so efficiently coordinated the fantasies of all those characters on Fantasy Island? I would prefer you not stay awake at night over that like I have.
Life was complicated back in the Jurassic; the marriage between Gondwanaland and Laurasia to form the supercontinent Pangea was on the rocks (literally) and it appeared the two were splitting up and going their separate ways through no faults of their own; normal, transform or otherwise. The kids, somewhat continental in spirit, who are always the ones to suffer, drifted apart.
During the course of this connubial upheaval there lived a humble little gymnosperm, born of the well-established Araucariaceaen family. Its survival during these difficult times was dependent upon its not being devoured by foraging avian proto-types (dinosaurs), not being head-butted and trampled by those afore mentioned proto-types, resisting or recovering from disease as well as surviving the ever whimsical, ever changing climate.
Eventually (somewhere around the end of the Cretaceous), the siblings nobly resigned themselves to the fact that their only survivors would be the descendants of those who went on retreat in what would become Australia. Of course this noble factual resignation is something you might expect from a plant named Wollemia nobilis .
Now those fateful descendants of this noble pine, not to be confused with the noble fir (Abies procera), which is alive and well in the North American Cascades, nor the noble pine of David Thoreau, which is not alive and well, lived on in a secluded canyon, in the shadow of the Blue Mountains. This canyon would eventually become part of the Australian National Park, named Wollemi. Now you might think that Wollemi National Park was named after General Wollemi or some other famous figure who historically discovered, saved, ravaged or pillaged something or someone. Not so, for Wollemi is a word, coined by the aboriginal people of Australia, which means figuratively, “Heads up, dude! – pay attention, watch out” or something along those lines. That’s probably good advice for your average walkabout.
Now this tenuous path along which I have traveled in my figurative walkabout so to speak, as have my fellow North American Wollemia nobilis seekers, has been; well, tenuous.
Let me explain:
The descendents of that Mesozoic species of yore were discovered by a New South Wales park ranger named David Noble in 1994 while he and some buds were hiking in Wollemi National Park. Do you see a connection, nobilis – Noble? By golly, I’ll bet it was named after him. The species name is nobilis; Wollemia is the Genus. It had to be smart to have survived for that long. Its equally clever cousins include the Norfolk Island Pine, Monkey Puzzle pines, the Moreton Bay or Hoop Pine, and the Bunya Pine. Interestingly, the Bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii), much like the Wollemi Pine, is the last survivor of its Section, and its fossils occur back in the Jurassic. Its ancestors too, took a sabbatical to Australia – mate.
Several entrepreneurial individuals saw a niche to be filled in selling the world the opportunity to own it’s very own Wollemi Pine and so Wollemi Australia was formed as a joint venture between the Queensland Government Department of Primary Industries (Forestry) and Birkdale Nursery. Wollemi Australia then went forth and licensed various entities to sell said plant. In the opinion of some friends and myself, the US counterpart is not as reliable as we would like, so we have set out to find another source that doesn’t require smuggling the unsuspecting Wollemi across a national border. We thought we were close to achieving our goal last month when we stumbled across a wholesaler in Florida who declared that he could not GIVE these things away.
Unfortunately, by the time we succeeded in contacting these wholesalers they had done that very thing and then trekked themselves off to New York State.
