It withstood hurricanes, lightning strikes and pests: 'This tree is a survivor'

ORLANDO – It’s been struck by lightning at least three times and has survived multiple hurricanes – and it sprouted from an acorn around the same time Juan Ponce de León’s ship first landed on Florida's eastern coast.

“Big Tree,” an imposing southern live oak, sits in an unassuming park just outside Orlando’s business district, its moss-covered limbs jutting out over 30 feet on all sides. Over 400 years old, the tree is so impressive that members of a Michigan-based nonprofit flew to Orlando in February to climb and sample it. The arborists are now in the midst of a monthslong process to grow new roots from the clippings. The reason: To clone the historic tree, store its DNA and plant potentially thousands of replicas across the Southeast.

The southern live oak, which has a trunk as thick as 8 feet, is part of a rare cohort of trees which have survived centuries of extreme weather, pests, diseases, human interactions and other life threatening phenomena. Research has shown that such old, large trees pull significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and are integral to the diversity and resilience of forests across the globe. And with the increasing threat of climate change, arborists, researchers, conservationists and others say that they must be protected and preserved – even, perhaps, through cloning.

“This tree is a survivor,” said David Milarch, the co-founder of the family-run nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, which is attempting to clone "Big Tree." “There's something in that DNA that, in spite of everything it's been through, it's still growing, it's still healthy. That's the type of tree we need.”

How 'Big Tree' became clone-worthy

Native to much of the southeast, live oaks are iconic figures in landscapes across the Sunshine State, from Tallahassee to the Florida Keys. They're among the state's largest native plants, able to grow 60-80 feet tall and 60-120 feet wide, according to the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

And though the massive oaks can survive centuries with their deep root systems and thick branches – which can withstand hurricane force winds – "Big Tree" is a central Florida standout because it has outlived its contemporaries by over 100 years, said David Wagg, Orlando’s Families, Parks and Recreation manager.

"We've got well over 100,000 trees that the city maintains, and we consider 'Big Tree' to be the oldest," he said. "It's obviously a grand old tree."

The parks division first installed a placard noting the tree’s historic status in the 1920s and, about 30 years later, bought the land, named the park after the live oak and opened it up to the public.

In the 1970s, the tree was struck by lightning at least three times during a ferocious thunderstorm. The city hired experts to inspect the tree and perform critical work on its root structure. Over the past 50 years, it has required minimal upkeep.

When the city was connected with Archangel Ancient Tree Archive earlier this year, officials soon agreed to let the nonprofit's arborists ascend the tree's canopy and take samples.

What is Archangel Ancient Tree Archive?

Over the past 30 years, Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has made its name on cloning more than 130 tree species across the country, including giant sequoias and 3,000-year-old California redwoods. The group's clones shade the streets of Seattle and Eugene, Oregon. In the Presidio, a park at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, 75 clones of near-extinct redwoods are growing. Its trees have also gone overseas, with a portion of the nonprofit's clone-stock standing in at least seven countries around the world.

The group has also cloned trees with notable historic connections. Horticulturalists replicated some of the last trees planted at the direction of George Washington on Mount Vernon, his estate in Virginia. They’ve also cultivated several clones of trees on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Virginia and Teddy Roosevelt’s home on Long Island, New York.

Milarch, the co-founder of the group, is a third-generation arborist. As a boy growing up in northern Michigan, he spent countless hours working on his father's shea tree nursery, which he ran for several years and eventually inherited.

But it wasn't until he was in his early 40s when a near-death experience led him to start the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive.

In 1991, Milarch almost died of kidney and liver failure after he decided to quit drinking cold turkey, according to the biography "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jim Robbins. About a month later, Milarch, who was still recovering, scrawled his plan to clone the planet's biggest and oldest plants. Ever since, he's dedicated his life to the project that he says may one day halt and reverse climate change.

"There was a clear line between my life before ... and my life after," the 74-year-old told USA TODAY, speaking of his epiphany. "Until my last breath, I'll be working for the world's grandchildren."

The 'magic' of cloning historic trees

In order to clone an ancient tree the Archangel way, one must climb it.

The group has made national headlines for this sight alone: Helmeted researchers hoisting themselves up the trunk of a colossal redwood or sequoia in order to find, somewhere in the canopy, a piece of live tissue – tree cloning’s vital ingredient, Milarch said.

The freshly cut limbs and leaves are taken to the group’s lab in Michigan, where, in climate-controlled rooms, propagators work to spur growth from the samples.

The most common method is by rooted cuttings, which has long been used by horticulturists. In this method, a tip of a tree's branch is dipped into hormones, placed into a foam plug and set inside a mist chamber. Then, the waiting begins. A sign of life could take several months to a year to show, if one comes at all.

In another method called tissue culture, propagators take a quarter-inch of stem, drip it in a liquid made up of a dozen hormones and other chemicals, seal it in an airtight container and wait until it grows roots.

With each new tree, the group tries hundreds of combinations. The experts change the hormones, adjust the temperature of the test room and vary the amount of water being sprayed on the samples. About 90% will fail. However, those that form new roots are subsequently cloned. Because they’re young, their success rate is much higher than that of samples from the original tree.

“Once we get some juvenile wood and then start cloning off of that, we can make millions of these trees,” Milarch said. “It’s about figuring out what the magic combination is that allows the tree to clone itself. … It takes a while but cloning [historic] trees is akin to asking a 100-year-old woman to have a baby.”

Is tree cloning a magic bullet?

Experts who spoke with USA TODAY lauded the group for its innovative methods and large scale propagation, but they cast doubt on the assumption underlying the nonprofit’s work: That the clones will prosper as the originals have.

Scott Merkle, a professor of forest biology at the University of Georgia, said there are many factors that contribute to a tree’s age in addition to genetics: the site it’s sitting on, what’s interacting with it in the soil, the surrounding environment and luck.

“There's so many variables that there's certainly no guarantee that they will be able to survive and perform better than other trees that you might put out on the landscape,” Merkle said. He added that the sheer age of historic trees makes them difficult to study.

“There’s no real way to test these hypotheses in our lifetimes,” he said. “I think it’s a great thing that they’re doing. … I just don’t know how realistic it is.”

John Butnor, a research plant physiologist for the U.S. Forest Service, said although a tree's genetics may play a role, it's the genetic diversity of the nearby trees “that gave rise to that individual.”

“Trees grow together in [forests] and affect each other,” Butnor said. And because genetic diversity is so vital to a forest’s health, cloning has not been part of the federal government’s calculus in developing resilient forests. Butnor added that if clones make up a vast portion of a forest's tree population, it could potentially “reduce genetic diversity."

Chuck Cannon, a senior scientist at the Morton Arboretum, a research center and botanical garden in Illinois, said he hopes focus remains on protecting the remaining historic trees, which he said, in some cases, are impossible to replace.

“I don't really see [ancient and old trees] as saviors,” Cannon said, “but, they’re an important piece of the puzzle, and something that we're going to lose otherwise if we don't protect them.”

To Milarch, historic trees are worth the gamble. If the clones of historic trees live as long as their parents, they'll put up a strong fight against climate change, he said. If not, at least their DNA will be stored, and the planet's oldest, most majestic trees – from California redwoods to Florida live oaks – will be able to avoid any potential extinction.

“This is our last opportunity to clone these ancient trees, capture those all important genetics, plant them and pay it forward,” he said. “Time's not in our favor.”

Back in Orlando, the city stands to benefit from cloning "Big Tree."

After the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive successfully clones the live oak, the city will receive several, hopefully by the end of the year, said Milarch and Wagg, the parks manager. Other replicas of “Big Tree” will go to cities, counties and nurseries across the region.

"I think that's pretty cool," Wagg said. "A little piece of Orlando will be throughout the Southeast."