BY RUSSELL MCLENDON, MOTHER NATURE NETWORK, DECEMBER 17, 2018.
The clones come from trees that were larger than any alive today.
A new “super grove” of endangered coast redwood trees has arisen in California, thanks to a nonprofit group that planted 75 saplings at a park in San Francisco.
Since their species is endangered, any new community of coast redwoods would be welcome news. Yet these 75 saplings are also newsworthy for another reason: They’re all clones, born of DNA that conservationists retrieved from ancient redwood stumps. Now growing together at the Presidio of San Francisco, they carry on a valuable genetic legacy that dates back thousands of years.
The trees were planted on Dec. 14 by Archangel Ancient Tree Archive (AATA), a nonprofit group that creates “living libraries of old-growth tree genetics.” Each sapling was sourced from one of five ancient stumps in Northern California, remnants of redwoods that were all larger than the largest tree standing today, a giant sequoia known as General Sherman. After discovering the stumps were still alive, AATA co-founder David Milarch and his team led an expedition to clone them.
