Wollemi Pine Update ☹️

In 2007 I received a small potted Wollemi Pine cloned from a secret stand of around 100 trees somewhere in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
The Wollemi Pine is one of the world's oldest and rarest plants dating back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Over the years I have documented its progress on this blog.

It has done remarkably well.

Until now.
The tree doesn’t like ‘wet feet’.
So far this year we have received 1700mm of rain.
The annual average is 1100mm.
Our property has been soggy for months with the water table so high and drainage slow.
The pine started to show some stress a few months ago with yellowing of the top leaves.

Now the top half is completely dead.

Fingers crossed it is ‘self regulating’ and will survive with the remaining foliage.
But the forecasts are not good
Australia is in the midst of a negative Indian Ocean Dipole event which is producing the higher rate of rainfall over the east coast.

There are also have above average sea surface temperatures around Australia. These conditions mean that there’s a lot of available moisture that can be dragged into these weather systems as they cross the country.

The October to December outlook suggests wetter than average conditions for most of eastern Australia.
There was also a 70% chance of a La Niña event developing during the spring, which was contributing to the wetter than average outlook.