NYC Tree Gets a Second Life in China

ByABC News
July 30, 2002, 2:33 PM

July 24 -- It may not have been love at first sight, but the first time Dave Karnosky laid eyes on a giant Chinese elm tree in New York City's Central Park, he knew he was looking at something special.

That was about 25 years ago, and the elm is no longer there. It had to be destroyed in 1993 because it was rotting from the inside out and posed a danger to park visitors. That's unfortunate, because the elm had thrived in a region that should have been too cold, and in an urban environment that should have been too harsh, and it grew to majestic proportions, much larger than other Chinese elms.

And that could be the end of this story, except for one little fact. The great elm, known as Central Park Splendor, is alive and well, and it's living in China, its native land.

Karnosky, now a professor of forestry at Michigan Technological University, cloned the tree from leaf tissues he collected long ago, and he recently took 150 trees back to China. He delivered the small trees to scientists at three institutions there, and by the next day they were already planted in various nurseries.

A Tree With Royal Roots

"I thought this was really a neat thing to have preserved this tree and then sent it back to its homeland," says Karnosky. Scientists there were eager to get it, he says, because the Central Park elm is especially cold hardy and might extend the elm's range to northern China. Much of China is being swamped by growing deserts, and scientists there are eager to find any plants that can help stem that tide, Karnosky says.

Karnosky began this unusual project when he was working for the New York Botanical Gardens in the late 1970s."The Arthur Ross Foundation asked me if I would take a look at a very large Chinese elm that was growing in Central Park," he says. The foundation, headquartered in New York City, has a long history of sponsoring conservation projects.

The 60-foot tree was believed to have been presented to New York City in the 1870s by the King of Prussia. It had caught the attention of the foundation because it appeared to be dying of old age, and would eventually have to be destroyed. The foundation wanted to know if Karnosky could propagate the tree so that it could hang around longer, even if in different settings.