After 2 decades of tracking down world’s oldest trees, group ready to begin planting clones
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/22/after-2-decades-tracking-down-world-oldest-trees-group-ready-to-begin-planting/
If you assume, as I do, that trees that have lived long lives are simply lucky, meaning there wasn’t anything intrinsic in their DNA/epigenome that allowed them to achieve their lofty ages, then all these guys are doing are creating identical clones that will all be equally sensitive to any disease they are vulnerable to, thus, no different from the monoculture of many of our crops, sensitive to a ‘pandemic’ that will wipe them all out. Given that these people clearly intend for these clones to live for thousands of years, the lifetime risk of such an event happening is quite substantial.
Of course, if there is indeed something intrinsic that enabled these trees to live long and prosper (having seen the routine predation and happenstance that can kill plants at all ages, I would need a great deal of convincing), then they might be resistant to a number of diseases already and this might be a better approach than growing seedlings. On the other, other hand, it would be important to ensure that these trees are self-fertile (many species are not) so they don’t accidentally create a population that is incapable of breeding.
Oh well, if anyone cared what I thought I no doubt would be a billionaire owner of several space stations.
