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Couple plants real-life 'money tree' and its first seeds are worth over $6,700

The species is at least 200 million years old.

via Daderot/Wikimedia Commons and C T Johansson/Wikimedia Commons

A Wollemi pine and one of its cones.

As the old adage goes, money doesn’t grow on trees. However, what if you had a tree that was so rare that people would spend good money for its seeds? Then you could honestly say that you have a money tree growing in your yard. Such is the case for a retired couple in England, Pamela and Alistair Thompson, both 75, who in 2010 paid £70 ($98) for a 46cm-tall Wollemi pine sapling that a friend bought on the Shopping Channel. It’s believed that it was the first ever endangered tree species to be protected by making it available to the general public.

What is the Wollemi pine?

The Wollemi pine is valuable because it appears in the fossil record as far back as 200 million years ago and was thought to have gone extinct about 70 to 90 million years back. However, in 1994, a bushwalker in Australia came across a Wollemi pine in a secluded gorge. Biologically, it was a discovery as significant as coming across a living dinosaur in a hidden part of Australia in the ‘90s.

Wollemi is an Australian Aboriginal word that means "watch out—look around you."

wollemi pine, endangered trees, australian trees, seattle, washington, rare trees A Wollemi pine in Seattle, Washington. via Brewbooks/Wikimedia Commons


The tree may have made its way to Eurpoe, but the wild trees are under threat from wildfires and climate change. It’s believed that only about 90 exist in the wild today. In 2006, it made its European debut when Sir David Attenborough planted one at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. “How exciting we should discover this rare survivor from such an ancient past,” Attenborough said.

After 15 years of special care, the Thompson’s tree began to bear fruit for the first time in August 2025. “This year has been so ­unusually dry, it happened earlier,” she said, according to The Times. The couple now plans to package the valuable seeds from the tree and give the money to the National Garden Scheme. The National Garden Scheme is a government program where people open their gardens up to the general public, and the money that is generated is donated to the Queen’s Nursing Institute.

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How much does a Wollemi pine cost?

“I saw a small tree for sale for more than £1,000 ($1352), which shows how rare they are. We’re planning to package the seeds five or six at a time and sell the bundles online for £5 ($6.76). We’ve seen some retailers sell them for much more, but we want to make them accessible for people, as well as raise money for charity. We don’t yet know how many will be healthy and produce trees. Only time will tell.”

"We have around five large cones, which have produced about a hundred or so large seeds each. It would be lovely to see just how many seeds we can produce, but I have been very surprised by the numbers so far this year,” she said, according to Unilad. So, if you do the math, 100 seed packs at $6.76 each would go for $676. Not bad for just collecting seeds.

But they could make a lot more money off the seeds if they chose to do so. It’s believed that one seed can go for as much as £10 ($13.52). If they sold all 500 seeds produced by the five cones, they'd make $6,760.

This tree could net them thousands of dollars a year in perpetuity. “It really does prove that money can grow on trees,” Mr. Thompson said, according to The Times.

wollemi pine, endangered trees wollemi pine cone, australia trees, money tree, dinosaur tree A female Wollemi pine cone.via Adrian198cm/Wikimedia Commons

Preserving the Wollemi pine for the future

In 2023, over 170 young Wollemi pines grown by the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, in Australia, were shipped to be planted in 28 botanic gardens with climates that could support the pines, across the UK and Europe. One Wollemi was sent to Atlanta, Georgia, in the U.S.

“Discovering the lost Wollemi pines in the wild was a truly astounding moment for international tree conservation, and to be a leading partner nearly thirty years later in launching this important new metacollection on UK soil is an exciting moment for Forestry England,” Mike Seddon, Forestry England Chief Executive, said in a press release. “As we care for the Wollemi pines we plant today, we’ll be able to study the way they grow, learning with the other botanic gardens how they flourish outside Australia. The climate crisis means that across all continents, many trees like Wollemi pines are facing urgent threats to their survival. We know that 34 per cent of conifers are now endangered, and our ongoing work to research, propagate, and save tree species is more vital than ever.”

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A new development in Seattle is making affordable housing a priority for the city’s residents

Pavel Verbovski
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Forrest doesn't mind admitting he needed a second chance. The 49-year-old had, at one point, been a member of the Army; he'd been married and had a support network. But he'd also run into a multitude of health and legal problems. He'd been incarcerated. And once he was released, he didn't know where he would go or what he would do. He'd never felt so alone.

But then, some hope. While working with Seattle's VA to obtain a place to live and a job, Forrest heard about Mercy Magnuson Place, a new development from Mercy Housing Northwest that would offer affordable homes to individuals and families who, like Forrest, needed help in the city's grueling rental market.

Forrest remembers not wanting to even go see the building because he didn't want to get his hopes up, but a counselor persuaded him. And when he learned that the development was a repurposed former military barracks — now a historic landmark — he knew he'd feel right at home.

Today, Forrest couldn't be happier. "I've got a 10-foot-high ceiling," he says. "I've got 7-foot windows. I look out onto a garden." His studio apartment, he says, has more space than he knows what to do with. For someone who's spent chunks of his life not having a place to call his own, the three closets that Forrest's apartment boasts are a grand luxury.

"I love walking the grounds," Forrest says. "I get to walk on these grounds where other soldiers have actually served. It's humbling. I have a great reverence for this place."

The apartment and the grounds are only the beginning of Forrest's second chance. Along with housing, Mercy Magnuson Place offers its residents a support system which works to ensure they're thriving. For Forrest, that means being connected with organizations that can help him maintain his physical and mental health. Even more importantly, Forrest says, he has been volunteering at the Magnuson Park Community Food Pantry and is excited about giving back to a place that's helped him get his life back.

"I really wanted a place that I would feel part of a community — where I felt I wasn't alone. When I moved here, everybody — all of my neighbors, everybody that I meet — they're all just super nice to each other," Forrest says. "We help each other out. We open doors. We bring in each other's groceries. There's a huge sense of community here."

The belief that community can help individuals transform their lives is integral to Mercy Housing's mission. And it's one of the many reasons that Capital One got involved with the development of Mercy Magnuson Place.

"Magnuson Park is an ideal location for people seeking to enhance their lives – near jobs, transportation, schools, a community center, and dozens of nonprofit organizations based at the park," says Bill Rumpf, president of Mercy Housing Northwest. "We are grateful to our many partners who helped us to welcome all the new residents to Northeast Seattle. It was truly a neighborhood effort."

Before it was completed, Mercy Housing ran into a complication due to a potential tax code change that threatened the closing, so Dave Musial, a Capital Officer with the bank, stepped in to help.

"To the community, these buildings are more than just four walls and a roof. There are history and personal connections," Musial says. "I jumped at the opportunity to help Mercy Housing. Capital One stepped up and said, 'We'll help you make this development a reality.'"

Pavel Verbovski

Capital One is committed to making an impact in the communities which it serves and Musial knew there was no greater way to do so in Seattle than assuring Mercy Magnuson Place opened its doors to offer affordable housing to those that needed it most.

The bank provided $13.5 million in construction period financing and $34,569,000 in tax credit equity for the building's development. With Capital One's financial support, the development moved forward to closing, into construction, and began welcoming residents soon thereafter.

As of today, the building's 148 units are complemented by a 15,000-square-foot childcare center that's open to the public. In a city where affordable childcare is difficult to come by, Mercy Magnuson Place isn't just filling a need for the city's parents — it's cementing its place as a community hub, breathing new life into a historical landmark that will now never be forgotten. In addition to the 15,000-square-foot childcare center, there is 1,500 square feet allocated for the provision of resident services and another 1,500 square feet for Neighborcare Health, a Seattle-based non-profit healthcare provider.

Forrest can't imagine life without Mercy Magnuson Place. "I've got a girlfriend now," he says, "I've got a car." Though Forrest has put a great deal of effort into transforming his circumstances, a lot of credit, he says, must be given to the support he's received at his new home. And for that, he says, he'll always remain forever grateful.

"One of the first weeks I was living here, I was going out to do my walk when I saw a guy with a hard hat on," Forrest says. "And I just walked up to him and I said, 'Hey, I don't know who you are, or what you really have to do with this — but, thank you.'"

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It sucks, but it's time to ditch plastic straws. Seattle's going to make it happen.

Straws suck.

They seem to come with every drink, whether you want one or not, only to end up in the trash soon afterward. From there, it’s all too easy for them to end up as more pieces of plastic pollution in our oceans.

But in one particular city, that might not be a problem anymore.

For the month of September, the Lonely Whale Foundation is running a campaign to encourage Seattleites to ditch their sucky plastic straws.

The campaign, Strawless in Seattle, is part of the foundations’s Strawless Ocean initiative, whose overall goal is to keep 500 million plastic straws out of American mouths and garbage cans this year.

"My mother taught me at a very young age to take care of my own environment, to clean my room,” says actor and Lonely Whale co-founder Adrian Grenier. “Now that I'm an adult, I recognize that my room has expanded, not just to my house, but also to my neighborhood and the world at large.”

Grenier (center), Daryn Mayer (left), and Brian Maynard pose for a quick selfie at a benefit for PFLAG in 2017. Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for PFLAG.

So far, over 200 Seattle restaurants and venues have joined in, including the Space Needle, Sea-Tac airport, and CenturyLink Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks football team. Instead of plastic straws, businesses will either ask their patrons to go without or offer biodegradable paper straws instead.

The campaign even comes with its own hashtag, which encourages people to #stopsucking.

One individual plastic straw might seem harmless, but when we zoom out to look at what we’re doing to the planet, we’re not talking about individual straws.

There are people who might need a straw, such as someone who has mobility challenges, but for many of us, it's a luxury — one we're really fond of.

Americans alone use half a billion of the little suckers every single day, and once we’re done with them, they don’t stay in our drinks. Many of them find their way into our oceans. Plastic straws are actually one of the most common forms of plastic pollution in the ocean.

According to one study, the oceans might actually contain more plastic than fish by 2050. Photo from iStock.

Plastics can be harmful in other ways too. In a particularly distressing video from 2015, researchers spent nearly 10 minutes trying to pull a discarded plastic straw out of a sea turtle’s nose. Even when these plastics break down, they never totally disappear. Instead, they turn into tinier and tinier microplastics, which can poison animals — and even find their way into our food and drinking water.

In many ways, Seattle is a natural place for The Lonely Whale to start a string of city-wide campaigns.

The Seattle waterfront. Photo from iStock.

Sitting on the Puget Sound, the city’s already taken several steps to protect the ocean from pollution, including a 2010 ban on plastic bags. The city council is also considering expanding an ordinance to ban plastic straws and utensils from all of the city’s restaurants in 2018.

Grenier and The Lonely Whale Foundation are hoping that the early success and buy-in from Seattle businesses will not only raise attention and sway people’s hearts and minds, but also show legislators and other cities what is possible. They’re already starting to plan for future campaigns in cities both in the United States and internationally.

"We've only just begun,” said Grenier. “Hopefully the world is watching."

Plastic pollution is a major problem, but through actions like these, we can make our effect on the ocean a little less sucky.

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8 abandoned industrial sites turned into whimsical, haunting, and gorgeous parks.

Hallo. It’s me. Your friendly neighborhood grouch.

It’s springtime, which means the sun is shining, birds are in the air, flowers are blooming ... blech. You know what I want? Pollution! Chemicals! I want to go where the grass is orange and the water green!

Maybe I’ll just trip on down to my favorite industrial site. Seattle's got a nice one full of rusty old towers and old coal grime and beautiful chemical processing machines and ... what is this?

Where did the coal gas plant go? All the equipment's here, but it looks ... clean and beautiful?!

Seattle's Gas Works Park used to make coal gas, but since the 1960s, it's been a delightful public park. The old plant towers like a post-apocalyptic cityscape over grassy hills and the water of Lake Union.

Gas Works is what you could call a "reclaimed park," and a lot of places around the world have jumped on the trend of grabbing old industry or waste sites and turning them into beautiful public spaces.

And I, as a trash-and-grime-loving grouch, could not be more disappointed! I mean, check out these other seven sites people have ruined with their whole "Oh, no, we don't like trash. We like laughing and flowers and babies and laughing-flower-babies" schtick.

Freshkills Park on Staten Island used to be the largest landfill in the country.

Photo from New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Now it's a park filled with osprey nests and kayakers. Kayakers! See what I mean?

Then there's Glass Beach near Fort Bragg, California. Pretty again!

The beaches used to be perfect grouch-worthy dumping grounds, but over time, people hauled out metal and other rubbish, leaving just glass behind, which the ocean's pounded into beautiful little pebbles. Now it gets tourists!

Although, really, even I, a grouch, must admit that this German park has a kind of eerie, serene beauty to it.

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Landschaftspark in Duisburg-Meiderich, Germany, used to be an ironworks plant, but was abandoned in the 1980s. Since then, it's been reclaimed and turned into a park and cultural center. There are even high ropes courses and viewing towers!

Photo by Thomas Starke/Getty Images.

The High Line in Manhattan used to be a freight line. Now it's basically like a super-cool elevated walkway and a garden had a baby.

Photo by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

Again with the babies!

Even old prisons are getting in on the bit. I mean, check out Alcatraz!

The gardens used to be one of the few bright spots on Alcatraz, back when it was an infamous prison. The gardens were abandoned when the prison closed down in the 1960s. Years later, with some human help, the plants exploded into this riot of color. There are even places where the plants have taken over!

Although, as much as I hate to admit it, I do really dig that whole overgrown ruins vibe...

The Huangpu River waterfront in Shanghai, China, used to be a steel factory and shipyard, but look at it now.

Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

Now it's known as Houtan Park. Regenerative wetlands are helping to restore the environment, while long, winding paths give visitors a beautiful experience right in the heart of one of the world's biggest cities.

Finally, check out Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul, South Korea.

Photo by Park Ji-Hwan/AFP/Getty Images

The stream used to be a gigantic, trash-filled eyesore and was actually covered over in concrete in the 1950s, but today, it's been restored into this grand public space.

And while trash is lovely, splashing around in that water does look like fun...

Fine, fine! You win! Even this grouch must admit reclaiming old industrial sites is pretty legit.

The mix between old tech and lovely green space, the concept of taking the old and revitalizing it, history and fun twisted together ... it's pretty magical. Plus, having parks nearby can make people happier and healthier!

You got me, springtime. I guess I have no choice but to go enjoy the new life humans have breathed into these old sites. Good job, guys.

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