Wollemi

 

There, alone, all by itself

Silently in the Garden it stands

Elder Tree of antiquity,

In even more antiquated lands

 

How proud you must feel

For all to come from far and see -

The living fossil that has cheated time

Here stands a dinosaur tree

 

But is that all there is, I wonder

Pride, fame, vainglory?

What of loneliness, that of life,

What of death, that couldn’t be?

 

The Wollemi seems to smile,

While the wind sings through her hair

A leaf swirls onto me –

In it, her soul’s laid bare

 

When you have lived for this long age,

Your life belongs to the stars,

You find your peace in the cosmos’ void

Within, there are no more wars

 

Just peace in every passing wind

That no longer has a way

You smile at every day that comes –

Sun or cloudy day

It matters not how far you came

How much is left to roam,

(Though once awhile you do look back

At the mountains that were Home)

 

I look upon the sagacious tree

Bereft of joy or gloom

Teaching all us fledgling souls

Without a bud, to bloom

I look closer still but smile to see

That healed are all its scars,

When you have lived for this long age,

Your life belongs to the stars….

 

24^th September. 2023

 

With less than 50 trees in the wild, the Wollemi Pine is one of the rarest trees in the world. Its closest relatives are probably the extinct pines which were a dominant feature of the landscape of what is now Australia during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods - between 200 and 65 million years ago.

Wollemi Pine, is so distinctive that it represents a new genus and must have been an evolutionary line distinct from any other surviving plant group for at least 65 million years. Its nearest living relatives are native pines of Australia and New Zealand: Hoop Pine, Bunya Pine, and Norfolk Island Pine.

The Wollemi Pine is named after the Wollemi National Park, the location where the Pines were first discovered in Sydney's now World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains. Wollemi is an Aboriginal word meaning "look around you, keep your eyes open and watch out". The Wollemi Pine was discovered as a small grove of seedlings and mature trees only 200 kilometres west of Sydney (Australia) in the Wollemi National Park. The exact location of the Pines is a closely kept secret because of the pristine and fragile nature of the wild habitat.

A sample of this rarest tree can be seen in the Royal Botanic Gardens.