Cloning Australia’s Rarest Gum Tree to Build an Insurance Population

The species, Eucalyptus recurva – also known as the Mongarlowe mallee or ice age gum – is thought to be between 3,000 and 6,000 years old. All six known wild plants grow just south of Canberra.

Peter Bredell, senior conservation horticulturist at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, has led a team that is cloning the gum by grafting cuttings taken from the wild plants onto hybrid Eucalyptus recurva rootstock in the ANBG nursery.

The grafting process has produced several identical copies of four of the six wild individuals. These clones are kept in the garden as an “insurance population” that can survive even if the original trees die.

Because Eucalyptus recurva does not produce viable seeds in the wild, the cloned trees are the only way to generate new, genetically pure material. The team must wait for the trees to flower – a process that can take up to twenty years.

When the clones finally flower, pollinating insects are deliberately kept away. Any stray pollen from other eucalypts could create hybrids, which would dilute the unique genetics of this ancient species.

By preserving exact copies of the remaining wild trees, conservationists hope to keep the species alive long enough to produce pure seeds and eventually re‑introduce them into their natural habitat.

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