Besame posted this at KTK last night,
which led me to hunt further, with the below results. Hopefully there are more efforts around California:
sandiegoreader.com - Oct 2019 - Joshua-tree-farm-in mission-beach/ — a 2016 high desert visit started architect Bob Craig on recruiting and helping people to save Joshua Trees by growing them:
...“The Joshua trees are dying. They’re not repopulating,” said Craig [of about half the trees in the national park] “...There’s not enough water.”
In [his] research, he found there was once a desert sloth, and a specific moth that would help pollinate the trees. “They don’t exist anymore...”
Wondering if a Joshua tree would grow outside the desert, [he could only find nurseries offering mature trees for landscapers at first, finally one in Arizona selling seedpods]. With research, and trial and error... he now has over 2,500 Joshua tree seedlings in a makeshift nursery at his Mission Beach home.
“I found most everything we believed is false,” said Craig.
His seedlings are growing outside of the desert, don’t need full sun, and actually grow faster and stronger in moist soil. But they require a lot of time and attention. [They're] fragile until they reach maturity in five to ten years [and] only grow about a foot at year. It isn’t until ...five feet that they start looking like the twisted, iconic photos in the 1987 top-selling U2 album by the same name [which is from limbs being knocked off by strong desert windstorms, or by animals].
There is no federal protection [for them because much of the remaining ones are on private land where developers have been sucessful defending their desert resort and commercial development landscape options].
...Craig’s mission, through his now-formed company, Joshua Tree Plant Adoptions, is to increase awareness of the tree’s plight, and make a viable business selling Joshua tree [seedlings, which he can safely ship at three- or six-inches — the height at which] the root structure could easily be split into three separate seedlings. Eventually he would like to help the national park repopulate the trees. The trees he’s growing appear to be a match for the Southern California strain...
Joshua trees seem a bit like wild animals or children — you want to have an age & health situation for reasonable certainty of raising them to sturdy independence and see them headed for a good life helping restore the world.
