Suburbs seeing lots of tree clones as lovely as a tree

The political nuttiness of this election season may leave you pining for a clone of Abe Lincoln. Would you settle for a cloned Lincoln tree?

While New York City makes news with its plan to clone historic trees, cloned trees have been part of the landscape in Chicago and the suburbs for years.

"The nursery industry does this all the time," says Kris Bachtell, director of collections and grounds at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle. "The entire nursery industry is largely full of clonal trees."

If you cut a stem from a spider plant and grow a new plant in a cup of water, you are cloning that plant.

"For trees, particularly old plants, it's not as easy as doing house plants," says Bachtell, who works with plant cloning as a member of the International Plant Propagators' Society (ipps.org). "It takes some expertise, some facilities and time."

Given the proper growing environment, hormones, temperature, moisture and other factors, a cutting from an old tree can produce a genetically identical new tree. The arboretum clones trees.

"We've bred or selected five elm trees that we've tested and said are worthy of continued, broader use," Bachtell says, noting clones of the arboretum's disease-resistant elm trees can be found in Chicago's Grant Park and Millennium Park and along Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue.

Chicagoland Grows (a partnership of the Arboretum, Chicago Botanic Garden, the Ornamental Growers Association of Northern Illinois and local nurseries) clones many innovative plants, Bachtell says. (See chicagolandgrows.org for information or to suggest a tree or other plant worthy of being propagated.)

"Diversity is Mother Nature's protection from one disease or one pest taking you out," Bachtell says. But as long as we clone a diverse group of trees, we're OK.

Wind, ice, soil, rainfall and other environmental factors can affect the way a cloned tree will grow and look, but a clone is genetically identical to the tree from whence it came.

"The Skyline honey locust is a clone; very predictable," Bachtell says of a tree communities often plant along suburban streets.

Those looking for more exotic clones might turn to the American Forests Historic Tree Program (www.historictrees.org). An offshoot and fundraiser for American Forests (the nation's oldest nonprofit conservation group), the program ships clones and seedlings of notable trees with roots from Gettysburg to Elvis Presley's front lawn.

For $39.95 (plus $10 shipping), a homeowner can buy a 1- to 3-foot Lincoln's Tomb White Oak cloned tree or seedling taken from the trees near the Abraham Lincoln family tomb in Springfield.

"In the last year, we have sold over 50 Lincoln Tomb White Oak trees and over 600 people have planted historic trees in Illinois," notes Jennifer Rankin, program director for American Forests Historic Tree Program.

While Abe's is the most popular tree from Illinois, George Washington's Mount Vernon Tulip Poplar usually tops sales, says Rankin.

Depending on the outcome of this fall's election, we might get a new crop of presidential plant clones -- from a John McCain Arizona Prickly Poppy and a Mitt Romney Maple that changes colors depending on which way the wind is blowing to a Barack Obama Mighty Oak (sold as an acorn only) or even a Hillary Clinton Weeping Willow.