in 1835 by Hardy Bryant Croom. By 1859, A.J. Downing reported on the success of the plant growing in cultivation: 'Our best specimen is about eight feet high, very dense, showing nothing but foliage, like a thrifty arbor vitae, and remarkable, particularly in winter, for the star-like appearance of the extreme tips of its young shoots. We have returns of this tree from Elizabethtown, N.J., Dobbs' Ferry, Yorkville, Flushing and Newport, in all of which places it succeeds well, and is considered hardy, except at the last place where it is reported tender.' Sargent in 1905 wrote that Torreya was 'now often planted in the public grounds and gardens of Tallahassee, Florida.' At present, no trees of any size are known in the northeastern United States, and the successful long-term cultivation of Torreya taxifolia north of Virginia remains unknown. The number of mature trees in cultivation outside of Florida may number less than two dozen. In contrast, old and large trees of Torreya nucifera are found in Boston, Massachusetts, and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania." Seeds or rooted cuttings of remaining wild specimens are foundational to the creation of potted or planted orchards for preventing outright extinction of a plant species and for maintaining documented genetic diversity of wild, rather than horticultural (or unknown), provenance. For safeguarding Torreya taxifolia in this way, "a large-scale ex situ effort began in 1985, funded by the Center for Plant Conservation and the Arnold Arboretum (Nicholson 1996). Rob Nicholson and Mark Schwartz collected cuttings from 163 wild lineages of T. taxifolia and then distributed resulting plants to 10 institutions in North America and Europe in the early 1990s." Multiple vegetative cuttings were taken from each of the 163 wild types, aggregating in a total of 2,622 cuttings. Because the original cuttings were mainly collected from lateral branches, shrubby forms (see image at right), rather than standard trees, were the result. For safeguarding purposes, in large pots or outdoor plantings, the shrub form was well equipped to produce male and female cones, often earlier than seed-grown plants would have, and sometimes in abundance. Only institutions in favorable climatic zones, however, could retain their specimens over the long term. Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, in Massachusetts, is hundreds of miles north of the native range of this plant. So in 1991, 97 rooted branchlets were returned to Florida, for safeguarding at Bok Tower Gardens. Even more were transferred to the Atlanta