The Story of the World's Loneliest Tree

A single wild tree on a New Zealand island could soon get some neighbors -- and that's a good thing. From a report: After seven decades of cuttings, failures, plant enzymes, a little coaxing, and a Maori blessing, one of the world's rarest trees -- which lives on a tiny island 40 miles off the northern edge of New Zealand -- might lose its title. And that's a good thing. A team of scientists and Ngati Kuri, the regional Maori tribe, recently returned from the island, where they scoped out potential conservation plans. Ngati Kuri members even planted 80 kaikomako saplings on the mainland this year. Yet those positive developments happened only by answering two important questions. How do you rescue a tree with no mate, and who shares that task? The story of the kaikomako resembles its home: rocky, with a generous dose of luck. Botanists identified one wild specimen in 1945 on the largest of the Three Kings Islands, Manawatawhi in Maori, which is a little bigger than Manhattan's Central Park. The tree isn't simply remote. It's completely alone. Blame the goats.

Four were released on the island in 1889 as a food source for possible shipwreck victims, and the population increased one hundredfold until the invasive animals were eradicated in 1946. Goats ate several island plant species out of existence, but the kaikomako survived by way of the classic real estate maxim. Location. In this case, it lived out of reach in a steep boulder field 700 feet above the ceaseless swells. Some scientists recognized the kaikomako as invaluable, a piece of New Zealand's biological heritage one calamitous storm away from vanishing. Others questioned whether it really was alone; perhaps it was a far-flung individual of an ordinary tree type that didn't require extra concern. You can read rest of the story on National Geographic website.

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