page_title: Wollemia
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Wollemia / Description / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Closeup of Wollemia male and female cones in Kew Gardens
context_page_description: Wollemia is a genus of coniferous tree in the family Araucariaceae. Wollemia was known only through fossil records until the Australian species Wollemia nobilis was discovered in 1994 in a temperate rainforest wilderness area of the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales, in a remote series of narrow, steep-sided sandstone gorges 150 km northwest of Sydney. The genus is named after the National Park.
  In both botanical and popular literature the tree has been almost universally referred to as the Wollemi pine, although it is not a true pine nor a member of the pine family, but, rather, is related to Agathis and Araucaria in the family Araucariaceae. The oldest fossil of the Wollemi tree has been dated to 200 million years ago.
  The Wollemi pine is classified as critically endangered on the IUCN's Red List, and is legally protected in Australia. After it was discovered that the trees could be successfully cloned, new trees were potted up in the Botanic Gardens of Sydney and Mount Annan.
  A Recovery Plan has been drawn up, outlining strategies for the management of this fragile population; the overall objective is to ensure that this species remains viable in the long term.
context_section_description: The discovery, on or about 10 September 1994, by David Noble, Michael Casteleyn and Tony Zimmerman, only occurred because the group had been systematically exploring the area looking for new canyons. Noble had good botanical knowledge, and quickly recognised the trees as unusual because of the unique bark  and worthy of further investigation. He took specimens to work for identification, expecting someone to be able to identify the plants. His specimens were identified by Wyn Jones, a botanist with National Parks and Jan Allen from the Botanical Gardens. After the identification was made, National Parks then went under a  veil of secrecy, with the discoverers not learning the full magnitude of their discovery  for about six months. National Parks came close to damaging the stand when a helicopter being used to collect cones inadvertently pruned one of the pines with its rotor.  The species was subsequently named after Dave. The other members of the discovery party questioned the naming but were informed that nobilis referred to the trees being noble in structure and not to David Noble.
  The first illustrations of the Wollemi Pine were done by David Mackay, a botanical artist and scientific illustrator who was working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney when the species was discovered.
  Further study would be needed to establish its relationship to other conifers. The initial suspicion was that it had certain characteristics of the 200-million-year-old family Araucariaceae, but was not similar to any living species in the family. Comparison with living and fossilised Araucariaceae proved that it was a member of that family, and it has been placed into a new genus, beside the genera Agathis and Araucaria.
  Fossils closely resembling Wollemia that are thought to be related to it are widespread in Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica from Cretaceous era sediments, but Wollemia nobilis is the sole living member of its genus. These trees remained common throughout eastern Australia until around 40 million years ago but then gradually declined in range and abundance. Before the relict population was discovered in Wollemi National Park, the most recent known fossils of the genus date from approximately 2 million years ago in Tasmania. It is thus described as a living fossil or, alternatively, a Lazarus taxon.
  Fewer than a hundred trees are known to be growing wild, in three localities not far apart. It is very difficult to count individuals, as most trees are multistemmed and may have a connected root system. Genetic testing has revealed that all the specimens are genetically indistinguishable, suggesting that the species has been through a genetic bottleneck in which its population became so low (possibly just one or two individuals) that all genetic variability was lost.
caption: Male and female W. nobilis cones
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