Cloning the largest and oldest California redwoods

A lengthy New York Times article published this week reported on the efforts of retired UC Berkeley forest and genetics professor William Libby, who is helping create a collection of clones from at least 100 of California's tallest and oldest redwood trees. The cloned trees will be donated to whoever wants, and is able, to care for them. They will not be patented, but will remain in the public domain. Clone-seedling redwood forests have already been planted in England, France, New Zealand and elsewhere

Using the clones of the biggest and oldest trees gives reforestation efforts reliability and control you don’t have with seedlings, Libby told the newspaper.

“A whole lot of things go into living longer, and no one can say these are better trees, although they likely are,” Libby is quoted in the article. “But they are icons. I’ve seen foresters cry when they’ve stood at the feet of some of these trees.”

At least one set of clones will be planted in a living archive somewhere in California, near a university.

“We’re archiving them so future scientists can come and study them and not have to go throughout the range and get individual permissions for each tree, which would keep a project from happening,” Libby said.

California redwood forest.

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