{"id":916251,"date":"2026-10-04T21:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T21:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/916251\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T21:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T21:42:15","slug":"australian-national-botanic-gardens-conservationists-cloning-rare-ice-age-gum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/916251\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian National Botanic Gardens conservationists cloning rare ice age gum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gum trees are synonymous with Australia, but only a handful of people have ever seen the Eucalyptus recurva.<\/p>\n

Known as the Mongarlowe mallee or ice-age gum, only six plants have been discovered in the wild, just south of Canberra.<\/a><\/p>\n

“When it was first found, it was a real botanical curiosity,” said Genevieve Wright, a senior threatened species officer with the NSW Saving Our Species program.<\/p>\n

Their age, based on the growth of the woody lignotuber of the largest specimen, is estimated to be between 3,000 and 6,000 years old.<\/p>\n

“It’s got these really small, beautifully recurved leaves,” Ms Wright said.Remnant of the ice age<\/p>\n

Peter Bredell is a senior conservation horticulturist at the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) in Canberra and said his first reaction when he saw the gum was “that’s not a eucalypt”.<\/p>\n

But he said the tree was probably Australia’s rarest and most threatened eucalypt.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Peter Bredell is a senior conservation horticulturist at the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)<\/p>\n

“We think that it’s really the last six of an ancient, remnant species that was around back in the ice age,” Mr Bredell said.<\/p>\n

“If anything happens to those plants, we’re really facing an extinction of the species.”‘No future’ without intervention\"A<\/p>\n

The Eucalyptus recurve has small recurved leaves. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)<\/p>\n

Reproducing the tree has been a collaborative and coordinated effort between a team of ecologists and horticulturalists.<\/p>\n

“There are no wild seeds,” Mr Bredell said.<\/p>\n

“The remaining six plants are too far apart to naturally reproduce in the wild, so it really has no future and is facing extinction without intervention.”<\/p>\n

Over decades, the teams have worked together and have successfully cloned the trees by grafting wild cuttings onto hybrid Eucalyptus recurva rootstock in the nursery at the ANBG.<\/p>\n

“The result is that we now have multiple copies of four of the six wild plants safely here as an insurance population,” Mr Bredell said.<\/p>\n

Tree can take decades to flower\"A<\/p>\n

NSW Saving Our Species program’s senior threatened species officer Genevieve Wright with a cloned tree. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)<\/p>\n

To conserve the species, conservationists must get the flowers to bloom, pollinate, fruit and produce genetically pure, viable seeds.<\/p>\n

Flowering is fickle in this species and can take up to 20 years.<\/p>\n

“You can have one individual flowering in one year instead of all six. So, it’s very hard to get the timing right,” Ms Wright said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The flowers and buds of a Eucalyptus recurva. (Supplied: Genevieve Wright)<\/p>\n

The ANBG is trialling a growth regulator to try to help the gums flower sooner. But even then, keeping the genetics true means being a gatekeeper to pollinators.<\/p>\n

“We’re going to have to make sure that no pollinating insects get to the flowers because they’ll bring pollen from other eucalypts that will cause hybrids,” Mr Bredell said.<\/p>\n

Delivering this project will take decades of dedication, but the team has put down roots and is sticking with it.<\/p>\n

“I think it would be hard for anyone to walk away from Australia’s most unique eucalypt and just say, ‘Sorry, you’re gone,'” Mr Bredell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gum trees are synonymous with Australia, but only a handful of people have ever seen the Eucalyptus recurva.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2666,64,63,2667,116675,483882,483884,483883,44,483885],"class_list":["post-916251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canberra","tag-conservationists","tag-eucalyptus-recurve","tag-gum-tree","tag-ice-age-gum","tag-news","tag-nsw-saving-our-species-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}