Endangered trees dubbed 'living dinosaurs' being saved at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Critically endangered trees dubbed "living dinosaurs" because they existed 200 million years ago are to be planted in Edinburgh as part of a global bid to save their species from extinction.

The six Wollemi pines, which exist in the wild only in one gorge in Australia, have been shipped to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), where they will be planted in the spring.

The Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) was thought to have died out up to 90 million years ago until a small population of fewer than 100 trees was discovered by chance in 1994.

Growing in the remote gorge in Wollemi National Park, about 93 miles from Sydney, the only known wild population is increasingly at risk from disease and wildfires.

Dr Hannah Wilson, head of the RBGE’s International Conifer Conservation Project, is helping to save the critically endangered Wollemi pine

New advances in genetic technology offer new hope for their future, however, by allowing botanists to breed genetically diverse Wollemi pines.

The young trees have been shipped to 34 gardens around the world, where they will form a "meta-collection", shared by several organisations with collaborative care and research, to establish a flourishing, genetically diverse global back-up population.

Dr Hannah Wilson, head of the RBGE-based International Conifer Conservation Programme, has overseen the six trees' arrival in Edinburgh.

Dr Wilson, who is monitoring the new arrivals in the Garden’s quarantine unit in preparation for a spring planting, said the enigmatic species and its intriguing back story could "capture the imagination and inspire people to want to find out more about conifers and wider conservation objectives".

"From fossil records we know these trees were living 200 million years ago alongside the dinosaurs and it was generally believed they had become extinct around 70 to 90 million years ago,” she said.

"Then, in 1994, Australian explorer and botanist David Noble abseiled down a remote gorge in the Wollemi National Park, New South Wales, and found himself amidst a small stand of living trees.

"Scientific research followed this amazing discovery, and the species has since been classified as critically endangered on the IUCN red list setting out the risks of extinction for plant and animal species."

The trees were discovered by Noble in a temperate rainforest wilderness area of the Wollemi National Park in a narrow, steep-sided, sandstone gorge.