Behind the Scenes with Matt McClellan

Larger than life

One of John Muir’s legendary giant sequoias has a new lease on life, thanks to the work of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive.

The story goes that Muir returned from a Sierra Nevada trip with the original seedling wrapped in a damp handkerchief. He planted the specimen beside a carriage house on his family’s ranch (now the John Muir National Historic Site) about 130 years ago. Today, the 75-foot-tall tree is dying from two regional fungal diseases. If healthy, these trees can live for thousands of years.

Keith Park, horticulturist and preservation arborist at the John Muir National Historic Site, climbed the tree to collect cuttings for the cloning attempt and considers this an insurance policy. He had tried root cuttings from the shoot tips with no success. He then turned to David Milarch, cofounder of the nonprofit Archangel, who had previously cloned trees planted by George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt.

Jake Milarch, an archive propagator at Archangel and David Milarch’s son, snipped the cuttings into 400 smaller pieces and treated them with an experimental combination of misters, artificial sunlight, nutrients, four hormones and a temperature of 74°F in the nonprofit group’s propagation facility in Copemish, Mich.

For more: www.ancienttreearchive.org

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