Dean Norton, George Cates and Dave Milarch discuss efforts to clone the huge white ash tree in the background planted by George Washington
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MOUNT VERNON, Virginia—Although famed in folklore for chopping down a cherry tree, George Washington may have gotten a bad rap.
In fact, says Dean Norton, horticulturist for Washington's home at Mount Vernon, the plans that are underway to reforest the grounds follow the ambitious original plans that Washington himself drew up for a healthy forest around his Potomac River home.
The need for reforesting is fairly clear. The old trees are dying, victims of age and drought conditions in recent years. More than 70 of the oldest trees that surround the lawn fronting the mansion have died over the past century. Only 13 of those trees, planted under Washington's direction, are left.
Conservationists aim to
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Also, deer keep eating new trees as soon as they break through the ground.
"We obviously had a problem—nothing young is growing in the forest," Norton says.
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To make things even more interesting, Mount Vernon trees will be reforested with genetic duplicates, or clones, of "champion" trees, the largest and often the oldest living specimens of a species. The clones are made the old-fashioned way, not in labs like Dolly the sheep, but by grafting buds from the champion trees onto the stocks of young related trees.
"What better place to put champion trees than George Washington's home?" asks George Cates, head of the National Tree Trust, who fostered cooperation between Mount Vernon and the Champion Tree Project, a private effort to clone the largest trees of each species.
Cates notes that Washington had a strong conservationist bent, recording trees he encountered over his career in his journals. Washington made plans to fill his estate with trees from the local forest in a pleasing symmetrical but natural pattern that was a popular trend at the end of the 1700s.
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| Champion planters
George Cates, left, and David Milarch sign a partnership agreement |
Cates recruited the Champion Tree Project to fill Mount Vernon's 200 acres of forest. Over the next 10 years, the project will deliver 100 sapling clones annually to Norton, who plans to use fencing to guard them from the deer overrunning the grounds. As many as 14 different species will appear in a filled-out forest, Norton says. Only $150,000 has been raised for the project from private donors, about one-fourth of the total needed for its completion, so Norton is continuing fundraising efforts.
Similar reforesting efforts are underway at Arlington National Cemetery and the Salt Lake City site of the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Why not just use seeds? Seeds from the champions contain only half of a parent's genes, so by making clones, the Champion Tree Project retains the full genetic record of these giant trees.
Retaining the genes of champion trees until the day when genetic scientists can unravel all their secrets represents an urgent need, says plant geneticist John Alleyne of the Florida Botanical Garden in North Largo. "There must be something inside them that allows them to withstand time."
Cloning trees represents the oldest of mankind's technologies. Most of the champion trees are cloned by so-called "T-bud" techniques, where a slice of bark containing a bud is sheathed into a T-shaped cut in the bark of a stock tree. The bud is tightly tied into place to keep out dirt, moisture and pests. "It's as much art as science matching the stock to the tree," Alleyne says.
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Grafting buds |
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| Many of the apples, pears, oranges and other fruits that people eat come from clones, trees selected for large fruit, resistance to pests or other desirable treaits and raised on tree farms. To clone champion trees, horticulturists most often use a "T-bud" technique:
1 A "T"-shaped cut is made into the bark in the side of a stock tree. 2 From the champion tree, a curved slice under the bud removes it from the tree. 3 The bud is slid into the pocket between the flaps of bark in the "T" slice. 4 The bud is tightly tied into place and begins to grow |
"Champion tree clones won't necessarily grow up to be the same size as the originals," says David Milarch, founder of the Champion Tree Project in Copemish, Mich. "But they do have the genetic potential to grow to the size of their parents."
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National Champion
White Ash Palisades, New York |
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crown spread: 82 feet |
At Mount Vernon, special efforts will be taken to plant a white ash, black locust and southern magnolia in locations first designated by Washington in his original landscaping plans.
As a special project, Milarch and sons Jared and Jacob have offered to clone the 13 trees still lining Mount Vernon's bowling green, sole survivors of the original landscape plan. The pair specialize in tree projects. They're planning to offer a clone of the 295-foot-high National Champion Texas Live Oak to President Bush as a belated Father's Day gift to his father, a noted supporter of the National Tree Trust.
"Trees are an important part of America's heritage," says Jim Lyons, a Yale natural resources professor and former Agriculture Department official. Even if the scions of champion trees don't turn into supersized successors to the ancient forests, he says, the attention they generate in making the public interested in rejuvenating the nation's forests justifies using them.
"We're doing this for people 50 years from now," Cates says. "We'll be planted long before these trees reach full size."
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