New arrival
Ursula Buchan
It is an intriguing fact that, every halfcentury or so, a conifer arrives on the scene which makes a real impact on our gardens. (As every schoolchild knows, a conifer is a cone-bearing gymnospermous and exogenous tree, usually, although not invariably, with an evergreen habit.) In 1853, the Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) was introduced from California, and was an immediate hit. Its name was changed to Wellingtonia to honour the Duke of Wellington, who had died the year before. This tree was planted widely in country-house gardens and in public parks, and is sufficiently tall to be picked out from a distance even now. The wood is red, and the bark soft and easily battered.
In the early 1890s, a chance cross between two conifers, Cupressus macrocarpa and Chamaecyparis nootkatensis, resulted in a hybrid tree of great vigour, grown first at Haggerston Hall in Northumberland by a man called Leyland. This was named by botanists X Cupressocyparis leylandii. The Leyland cypress has proved such a fast-growing, potentially tall hedging plant that it is feared and loathed by house owners all over the country, who find themselves at the mercy of their privacy-loving, or just plain stroppy, neighbours.
During the second world war, a deciduous conifer, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, known until then only from fossil records, was discovered in a remote locality on the borders of Hubei and Szechuan in China. At the end of the war, seed was sent to the Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts, whence in 1948 it was widely distributed to gardens in the temperate world, including the British Isles. Gardeners planted this tree with bated breath, since no one had any idea how easy or difficult it would be to grow. One old gardener told me, ‘We practically took its temperature every night.’ But the metasequoia has turned out to be hardy, easy and fast-growing, without being overbearing, and is a significant feature now in many a large garden. It has a steeply tapering, deeply fissured trunk, and pleasant emerald-green leaves, which turn pinkish-brown before falling in autumn.
Now, 50 years later, it is the turn of Australia to get in on the act, with the discovery of the Wollemi Pine, Wollemia nobilis, in the Wollemi National Park, 200 kms west of Sydney. The discoverer was an intrepid parks officer called David Noble who, on 10 September 1994, found a stand of trees, after abseiling into an immensely remote and deep rain-forest gorge. There are fossil records of this tree, 90 million years old, but fewer than 100 mature specimens have so far been found in the gorge — and nowhere else. The largest tree is 40 metres tall, the oldest probably about 1,000 years old. The director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, pronounced that the discovery was the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur alive. Which prompts one to send up a prayer of thanks that trees can’t move.
The tree has pendulous dark-green foliage, not unlike a fir, but with softer needles, and bubbly, dark-brown bark. It is in the Araucaria family, its nearest relatives being the Monkey Puzzle Tree from Chile and the Norfolk Island Pine from the Pacific. It is reputedly hardy down to –5˚C, so is a realistic prospect for gardens in the south and west, and has already been planted at, inter alia, Kew, the Eden Project, Trentham Gardens, Westonbirt, Bowood and Tregothnan and also, to get more idea of its cold tolerance, at the RHS Garden at Harlow Carr in Yorkshire.
Mike Nelhams, the irrepressible curator of Tresco Abbey Gardens, on the Isles of Scilly (which has a good claim to be the finest of all subtropical gardens in this country), told me how he acquired his tree. Lord Phillimore, who was born on Tresco, rang him up late last year to say that he had bid successfully for a Wollemi Pine at the auction held by Sotheby’s in Sydney of the first 200 propagated trees, organised to raise money for the tree’s conservation, and that he wished to donate it to Tresco Abbey Garden. Mike drove to Kew to collect it, and strapped it carefully into the car to take it home. ‘It was better than having a blonde in the passenger seat.’ Quite so. Tresco’s Wollemi Pine was planted last week, close to its rare relatives, Araucaria excelsa and Agathis australis. Mike says that he won’t put his plant in a cage to deter thieves, ‘since no one could carry anything off Tresco without the whole island knowing’.
In fact, from this month on, anyone can lend a hand in conserving it. Even flat dwellers, since, like the Norfolk Island Pine, the Wollemi Pine can be grown indoors as a container plant. Plants are now commercially available for £97 from the sole British distributors, Kernock Park Plants in Cornwall, in a three-litre pot (16 to 18ins high), to be delivered in late summer. For those who cannot wait that long, there are a few five-litre pot plants (24 to 26ins high) available now at £300; these were grown in Australia and flown here. (Visit www.wollemipine.co.uk.) Well, what are we waiting for?
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