The trees live on

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In 1783, President Washington commissioned his staff at Mount Vernon to plant sycamore trees on the verdant grounds. More than 220 years later, Mount Vernon horticulturalists have planted a clone of a sycamore tree from that era on the grounds and are cloning other trees already on the property dating to Washington's salad days.

Tree cloning isn't as scientifically intricate as human cloning, nor is it anything new. Plato, for example, referred to cloning fruit trees in his writings.

Today, fruit growers, vineyard operators and even historical gardeners clone plants and trees for a wealth of reasons. Each plant is an exact duplicate, down to the DNA, of the source material.

At Mount Vernon, horticulturalists have taken tissue samples from 13 trees still standing from George Washington's days in hope of creating replacements when the trees fall from natural disaster or old age.

"We'll be able to plant an exact duplicate," says Dean Norton, Mount Vernon's director of agriculture.

The 13 trees at Mount Vernon -- which include white mulberries, white ashes, poplars and American hollies -- "are the only living witnesses we have to George and Martha's time," he says.

Mount Vernon officials began cloning the trees in August 2001 with help from an Oregon nursery that specializes in the procedure. Additional clones are sent to Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum for safekeeping.

Plus, the genetic information gleaned from the plants will be stored so scientists worldwide can study it.

Mr. Norton says cloning must be completed using existing plants, not their seeds. The latter source, he says, would give the horticulturalist only 50 percent of the genes from a particular parent, not an identical copy.

Although the practice of tree cloning is common, Mr. Norton hadn't heard of any institution trying to clone historic trees for conservation purposes until recently. Now, he says, Mount Vernon has heard from the caretakers of Sherwood Forest in England looking for advice on cloning its aged trees.