Eric Davies, a forest ecologist at the University of Toronto, led a group of undergraduate students in the university's foresters club as they gathered about six litres of acorns from a tree in Queen's Park North, one of four remaining large White Oaks in the park. White Oaks, a common deciduous tree species in North America, are the largest and oldest trees in the green spaces outside the Ontario Legislature. "This tree in particular is one of the oldest remaining white oaks at Queens Park," Davies said said, pointing to a massive tree behind him. "It's a beautiful long-lived tree."
Wild relatives of cultivated plants are vital for increasing genetic diversity in crops, offering key avenues for improvements through introgression lines derived from crop-wild crosses.
