Ben Nicolson liked to head into the mountains north-west of Canberra, bushwalking and admiring exotic trees along the banks of Condor Creek, where he fished for trout near the foot of Mount Coree. He would catch and release up to a dozen trout from the shallow creek.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It was 1992, and Mr Nicolson, a geology student at university, was fascinated by seedlings shooting up from Blundells Arboretum near the creek. He took a few home and a rare Spanish fir has survived. The seedling stood about five centimetres in a clump of humus.
Established in 1929, the Blundells plantings were to test the performance of various species and for students of the newly established Australian Forestry School. On gently sloping land with an easterly aspect, the arboretum had 56 plots of 41 species by 1939, when a bushfire wiped out all but 19 plots.
"I was always interested in horticulture, and a mate was interested in conifers,'' Mr Nicolson said. "We went out bushwalking, not knowing about things. We took cuttings and didn't realise it was the wrong time [summer] of the year. Deciduous are best taken in winter."
They looked for stands of trembling aspen from North America and also came across some big Douglas fir trees.
When the 2003 bushfires swept through the mountains they wiped out the arboretum, which once comprised Canberra's biggest collection of exotic species outside the botanic gardens.
As a geologist, Mr Nicolson worked in places throughout the world, while his parents looked after his Spanish fir in a pot at home. Eventually, they transplanted it into a large plastic garbage bin.
''It took essentially 20 years to find out what that tree was,'' Mr Nicolson said. "I knew it was a fir or spruce, but wasn't sure. So I started researching all sorts of different trees and, eventually, went to the National Library, thinking if anywhere had some records, they would be there.''
National Arboretum Canberra executive manager Stephen Alegria said the arboretum could probably take up Mr Nicolson's offer of the Spanish fir, although it was not a straightforward issue. He said it would be a suitable planting by a visiting dignitary.
The arboretum does not have the capacity to accept all the offers it receives from people.
The Spanish fir is a slow-growing, long-living, potentially magnificent tree that would be a good candidate for a ceremonial planting.
Mr Alegria previously spent much of his time as a ranger rehabilitating the former Blundells Arboretum area after the fires.
"One of the missions of the rehab project was to try and get rid of all the pine wildings," he said. "But we deliberately left that stand to regenerate, we didn't kill all the pines, knowing there was some historical value among them, not just plain old radiata."
Friends of ACT Trees member and former forestry senior researcher John Turnbull offered to ask the National Parks to find a place for Mr Nicolson's tree at Bendora Arboretum, which escaped the 2003 fires and has a stand of Spanish fir trees.
''They are rare, they are not an endangered species, but are not common. Firs tend not to like hot summers,'' Mr Turnbull said.
For now, the surviving Blundells Spanish fir stands about two metres high in an old green bin, awaiting replanting to realise its full splendour.
