Sunday, January 03, 2016

Planting Giant Cypress Root Clippings in Hopes of Regrowing a Forest

An experiment in regrowing forests of the world's oldest trees led environmentalists this week to climb a nine-story tall, 2,000-year-old cypress in central Florida known as Lady Liberty.

After plucking cuttings from her crown, climbers packed them on ice and shipped the specimens overnight to the nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive's nursery in northern Michigan.

Organizers hope to root the clippings to grow genetically identical trees that will be replanted elsewhere in Florida in an effort to grow a new forest of giant cypresses.

The organization is engaged in similar projects in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Ireland and England to preserve the offspring of the best surviving specimens of ancient trees.


A bleak side of this, for me, is I wonder if this is even worth doing given the sea level rise that is coming for Florida.  :(

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People are surprisingly good at keeping back the sea in a world that is always changing, so I doubt there's much to worry about here (considering sea level isn't rising that fast anyways http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html particularly in Florida; certainly not faster than normal mitigation of changing beaches has been through the modern ages).