Living fossils and ancient trees
Trees that survive from the age of the dinosaurs — some known first as fossils, then found alive in a single hidden valley.
- 01
Trees№ 1854 minGinkgo: The Living Fossil That Outlived the Dinosaurs
A tree with no living relatives, unchanged for 200 million years, saved from extinction by temple gardeners and now the toughest street tree there is.
- 02
Trees№ 1174 minCycads: Living Fossils That Grow Their Own Fertiliser
Ancient seed plants that look like palms but predate the dinosaurs, host nitrogen-fixing bacteria in special upward-growing roots, guard toxic seeds — and are among the most trafficked plants on Earth.
- 03
Trees№ 5284 minWollemi Pine: The Dinosaur Tree Found Alive in a Hidden Gorge
A conifer known only from fossils until a bushwalker abseiled into a canyon in 1994 and found it living — now propagated worldwide to insure a species down to fewer than a hundred wild trees.
- 04
Trees№ 2995 minMonkey Puzzle: A Living Fossil With an Edible Crop
Araucaria — armoured leaves that outlasted the dinosaurs, a staple nut crop in Chile, and an endangered tree planted in suburban gardens.
- 05
Trees№ 2474 minKauri: New Zealand's Colossus and the Disease Closing Its Forests
One of the largest and longest-lived trees on Earth — a Gondwanan conifer that builds vast columnar trunks, made forests of its own, gave up a fossil gold, and is now dying of a soil disease spread on boot soles.
- 06
Trees№ 5063 minUmbrella Pine: The Living Fossil With Spokes for Leaves
A Japanese conifer so ancient and so distinct it sits alone in its own family — the last survivor of a 230-million-year-old lineage, with glossy needle-like 'leaves' arranged like the ribs of an umbrella.
- 07
Trees№ 4754 minSwamp Cypress and Dawn Redwood: The Conifers That Drop Their Needles
Deciduous conifers that grow in standing water, send up strange 'knees' to breathe, and — in the dawn redwood's case — returned from presumed extinction in a single dramatic discovery.
- 08
Trees№ 4954 minTree Ferns: The Trunks That Are Really Roots
Ancient, primitive plants that reach tree size with no wood, no seeds, and no flowers — surviving from the coal forests, building their 'trunks' from a sheath of roots, and reproducing by spore.
- 09
Trees№ 4504 minSouthern Beech: The Gondwana Tree That Maps a Broken Continent
Nothofagus — the beeches of Chile, New Zealand, and Tasmania whose scattered distribution is living proof of continental drift, and the backbone of southern temperate forest.
- 10
Trees№ 3613 minPodocarps: The Southern Conifers That Grow Berries
The dominant conifers of the southern hemisphere — totara, miro, rimu, yellowwood — that swapped dry cones for fleshy, brightly-coloured fruit to feed birds.