Treestudy teamback fromChile

A Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust member was among a team of tree experts who recently headed to Chile to conduct research on conifers as well as collect seeds to bring back to Scotland for further studies.

The team comprised the Trust’s Tom Christian, project officer of Perthshire’s Conifer Conservation Programme, Martin Gardner, co-ordinator of the International Conifer Conservation Programme at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Peter Baxter, curator at Benmore Botanic Garden, and PhD student Mauricio Cano.

They were successful in making significant seed collections from a range of conifer species, including Chilean Plum Yew and discovered two previously unknown populations of this threatened species – one in the Andes and one in the central depression.

As many of the valleys where this species grows have been flooded for hydroelectric schemes, the global population is in decline, so finding the new pockets of the trees gives hope that there may be further as-yet undiscovered populations in isolated areas.

The seeds will now be grown on in specialist facilities in Edinburgh, during which time their population genetics will be studied by Mauricio for his PhD.

Tom said on his return to Scotland: “Once they are large enough the resulting young plants will be distributed around the network of International Conifer Conservation Programme (ICCP) safe sites, including a significant portion to sites in Perthshire’s Conifer Conservation Programme and National Tree Collections of Scotland (NTCS) networks, where they will be grown on in perpetuity as part of our ex-situ conservation resource.”