LONDON, Mar 23: A giant redwood tree that was felled 125 years ago in the US state of California to satisfy a drunken bet is all set to be reborn with scientist cloning the stump in the UK.
The Fieldbrook Redwood Stump, whose stump is 35 feet in diameter, towered as high as a 30-storey building over the course of nearly 4,000 years in the US would have been the biggest tree alive today had it not been so ignominiously felled in 1890.
The tree was felled to satisfy a drunken bet about making a table big enough to seat 40 guests from a single slice of tree-trunk, The Independent reported.
The tree is about to be reborn as a clone planted on the coast of Cornwall, possibly as early as this spring.
Scientists have managed to cultivate cuttings from the Fieldbrook Redwood Stump, which is 35 feet in diameter, and 10 of its clones are now growing as knee-high saplings in the plant nursery at the Eden Project, near St Austell in UK.
This new plantation will be a library of the tallest, oldest living things on Earth.
“The notion of putting back trees that have their own story has huge appeal,” one of the scientist said. “There are lots of ancient trees in Britain that have a piece of history attached to them.”
The Fieldbrook stump is a Californian coast redwood which was felled under the orders of William Waldorf Astor, a wealthy American living in Britain, who became embroiled in a bar-room bet about making a table seating 40 from a single cross-section of a tree. (PTI)
^^^^