RHS Rosemoor plants Wollemia pines in conservation project

The team at RHS Rosemoor planted the Wollemia pine saplings in February

A Devon garden has become home to so-called dinosaur trees in a global conservation project.

RHS Garden Rosemoor, near Great Torrington, has planted six saplings of the endangered Wollemia pine imported from Australia.

Fossil records showed such pines were alive 200 million years ago, alongside the dinosaurs, project bosses said.

Australia had fewer than 100 wild trees, so Rosemoor was helping to save the pine from extinction, they added.

About 170 saplings were grown by the Botanic Gardens of Sydney as part of the conservation project and distributed across nearly 30 selected sites.

After quarantine, six of these were planted at Rosemoor on 8 February.

Tom King planting one of the Wollemia pine saplings at RHS Rosemoor on 8 February

The pine, Wollemia nobilis, was discovered by chance in 1994 in wilderness area in the Wollemi National Park, north-west of Sydney.

The whereabouts of the remaining trees growing in the Australian wild is being kept secret.

The wild trees narrowly escaped being destroyed by wildfires in 2019-2020, which burnt about 25 million acres (10 million hectares) of land in eastern Australia.

The species is now classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which sets out the risks of extinction for plant and animal species.

The pines at Rosemoor are part of this first global "metacollection" designed to safeguard the species from extinction, bosses said.

Recent advances in genetic techniques had also enabled Australian plant science and conservation experts to identify and breed genetically diverse Wollemi pines, they added.

For the first time, collections of these saplings are available to botanic gardens with suitable climates across the world.