New York City to Clone Trees
The plan is to plant a million trees to streets, parks and public spaces over the next decade. A 100-year-old European beech on Central Park's Cherry Hill was chosen as the first of 25 trees to be cloned. Agriculture students from a Queens high school rode hydraulic-powered tree-trimmers' buckets to upper branches of the 60-foot tree and snipped off 6- to 12-inch sections of new growth, to be sent to a scientific tree nursery in eastern Oregon. If all goes well, the genetic-match saplings will be back in two years, to be replanted. The cloning is a two-stage process in which cuttings are grafted to roots of the same species at the Schichtel Nursery in Oregon, and the new growth is later peeled away to create a sapling with the DNA of the original tree. The result is a genetically identical tree, although not one identical in shape to the original. Some trees — ash, oak and elm — that are particularly susceptible to disease must be certified as healthy to be cloned, he said. Each of the cuttings will produce 10 genetic copies of the original tree, allowed to grow to 2 to 3 feet before being sent back to New York for replanting.
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I read in the news this morning that New York City is planning on cloning what they call "historical" trees - that is, trees that have been around for at least a century.
