This is a companion piece to Sadiah Qureshi The Rebirth of the Wollemi Pine: Plant Lives in Histories of Extinction which is currently freely available in History Workshop Journal 100.
Whose lives count in the modern history of extinction? Whether as the subjects of conservation efforts, or historical accounts of conservation movements, for decades, the answer has been ways of being that were either feathered or furry. Plants rarely feature in histories of extinction. Whether it is postwar conservation efforts or historical accounts of the broader environmental movements, plants are routinely neglected in conservation projects and historical narratives. As a historian of extinction, I find the neglect of plants extraordinary. Almost all life on earth is sustained by the ways of being in this world that can turn sunlight into energy. Photosynthesisers, such as plants, algae or cyanobacteria, are the remarkable roots of nearly every food web on earth. Yet they are consistently ignored or neglected in policy-making and history writing.
Such neglect is especially evident in histories of extinction. In recent decades, the animal turn has reshaped the nature of who counts as a historical subject. The change has been immensely fruitful, but it also risks shifting from anthropocentric perspectives to animal-centric histories at the neglect, or expense, of kingdoms of plants, fungi, or bacteria. Scholars within environmental humanities increasingly forgo anthropocentric stories, to appreciate the ‘more-than-human’ world. In this vein, focusing on any species in isolation, especially humans, yields a partial story at best, and more often, a misleading understanding of life as shared experiences. Even so, plants remain neglected ways of being.
Using the example of the endangered Wollemi pine, this article suggests that paying attention to plants challenges historians to radically rethink common divisions of time and place, and assumptions about whose lives are historically interesting or significant. Crucially, we might also learn to write beyond human lifespans and needs, helping us to reconsider how we write, and respect, life itself through our scholarly practice.
Globally, the most important mechanism for tracking biodiversity loss is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List (henceforth Red List). The roots of the Red List lie in emerging postwar conservation efforts. In 1949, the American government hosted a meeting of the newly established International Union for the Protection of Nature (founded in 1948, later IUCN) at Lake Success, near New York, alongside a UNESCO conference on natural resources. The naturalist Hal Coolidge presented a paper proposing ‘Emergency Action for the Preservation of Vanishing Species’ and called for the establishment of an international office to co-ordinate efforts to track vanishing species.
Coolidge’s call was successful. As Chairman of the new Survival Service, Coolidge hoped to update existing lists of vanishing mammals, and provide more comprehensive lists for other groups starting with two preliminary lists of birds and mammals for immediate action. Initially circulated in meeting reports and internal publications, the first lists of endangered species collated by international organizations from the late 1940s were soon superseded by the Red Data Books, later the Red List, compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) from the 1960s.
Many early meetings developing the Red Data Books hoped for the listing of plants, but the first four Red Data Books were dedicated to mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, and freshwater fish. As early as the organization’s third general meeting in 1952, delegates supported listing endangered plants. Within three years a botanical subcommittee adopted the same system to classify plant endangerment as already used for animals, but its work stalled for lack of funding. Plants were not entirely ignored, but their protection and conservation fell by the wayside for decades.
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew led efforts to document endangered plants in the 1960s. The retired botanist Ronald Melville compiled a list of endangered flowering plants that served as the first Red Data Book listing plants, and fifth overall, in 1970. While an important step, the focus on flowering plants left huge swathes of the Kingdom unlisted. The IUCN’s Species Survival Commission finally appointed a Threatened Plants Committee in 1974.The first Red Data Book broadly exploring plant endangerment appeared in 1978 with 250 species listed. A revised version published in 1997 as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants was the comprehensive international listing of vanishing plants. The publication finally complemented, and expanded, decades of work on animals. Curiously, despite extensive explorations of the origins of the IUCN Red List within histories of extinction, there is almost no historical account of the Threatened Plants Committee. Neglecting plants within histories of extinction, is not just puzzling, but also means that histories of extinction often exclude some of the most extraordinary stories of life on earth.
In 1994, a trio of local hikers were exploring Wollemi National Park, within the Greater Blue Mountains Area. One of them was a field officer for the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) named David Noble. He noticed a small grove of peculiar trees. He took some leaf cuttings home and tried to identify the species. His father, Wyn Jones who also worked for NPWS, and a botanist based at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Sydney were all unable to help identify the species. Jones and Noble investigated further in collaboration with the botanist Jan Allen. Ultimately, they identified the tree as belonging to the Araucariaceae family of conifers, but representing a new genus and species, which they formally named Wollemia nobilis in a paper published in 1995.
Informally nicknamed the Wollemi pine, botanists were immediately fascinated by a tree they regarded as a survivor from prehistoric forests. The Araucariaceae family of conifers are believed to have originated in the Triassic between 230 and 190 million years ago, with wild forest communities scattered across the southern hemisphere in Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and South America. Fewer than a hundred wild Wollemi pines are known to have survived into the present, all within the Wollemi National Park. When news about the tree broke, it was quickly named the dinosaur pine, or pinosaur, and made headlines from Sydney to New York, and Mumbai to Japan.
The Wollemi pine’s tiny wild population prompted immediate fears for its future. Botanists quickly identified the tree as ‘critically endangered’ and established a conservation programme to try and protect the tree. The location of the wild trees is a fiercely guarded secret to protect them from unscrupulous collectors and accidental damage, such a pathogens, from trampling admirers. Botanists have collected and planted saplings in alternative locations to try and create new sites of survival. They have also cloned the tree to make it available to botanic gardens all over the world. Even domestic gardeners can purchase the tree and tend to a plant alive in the Jurassic.
The Wollemi pine has become such a celebrity that I now encounter several in my everyday life, including on the walk to work. Encountering an endangered tree saved from bushfires in Sydney thriving in rainy Manchester brings me joy even in the depths of winter. Writing about the Wollemi pine has also helped me appreciate just how much historians stand to learn by paying attention to plants, whether thinking beyond human lifespans or appreciating the lives we share our planet with. Caring for the Wollemi pine, whether as a potted plant, wild survivor, or historical subject requires historians of extinction to think differently. Trees can live to many thousands of years. Whether exploring them an individuals, or ways of being, considering the lifeways of trees can help us appreciate the remarkable lives we share earth with and give us reason to build a just future respecting all life.