Wollemia | |
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Young specimen in a botanical garden protected from theft by a steel cage | |
Conservation status | |
Scientific classification | |
Unrecognized taxon (fix): | Plantae |
Division: | Pinophyta |
Class: | Pinopsida |
Order: | Pinales |
Family: | Araucariaceae |
Genus: | Wollemia W.G.Jones, K.D.Hill & J.M.Allen |
Species: | W. nobilis |
Binomial name | |
Wollemia nobilis W.G.Jones, K.D.Hill & J.M.Allen, 1995 |
Wollemia is a genus of coniferous tree in the family Araucariaceae. It is a "living fossil", recently found in 1994. Its fossil record dates back 200 million years, and it was thought to be long extinct.
Wollemia nobilis was discovered in 1994 in a temperate rainforest wilderness area of the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales. in a remote series of narrow, steep-sided sandstone gorges near Lithgow, 150 kilometres north-west of Sydney.
In both botanical and popular literature the tree has been called the Wollemi Pine. It is not a true pine (genus Pinus) nor a member of the pine family (Pinaceae), but is related to Agathis and Araucaria in the family Araucariaceae.