City Trees To Be Cloned, Planted in Boroughs

If Mayor Bloomberg's promise to plant a million new trees by 2017 seems a daunting task, a Connecticut-based company may have found a shortcut — cloning. Arborists from Bartlett Tree Experts will take samples today from a 100-year-old Central Park beech tree with the help of 10 students from the agricultural program at John Bowne High School's in Flushing, Queens. The team will take 12-inch cuttings from the ends of the branches and use the samples to cultivate ten genetically identical trees at a nursery in Oregon. Once the samples reach between two and three feet, they will be planted throughout the city's five boroughs.

Samples from 25 New York trees taken this week will produce 250 clones for the city's Million Trees NYC, a citywide effort to plant a million new trees in the next decade.

"Certainly it's a small percentage of the million," a vice president of Bartlett, Ken Karp, said. "But these are trees with history and they're important to the city. To plant them throughout the city makes the project more valuable."