[5] John Nelson, in his more utilitarian as opposed to scientific 1866 horticultural handbook of firs and pines for growing in Britain, introduced the name Foetataxus montana to write about Torreya taxifolia, apparently unaware of the German publication the previous year.

In the spring of 1875, Harvard botanist Asa Gray embarked on a trip to the panhandle of Florida, to "make a pious pilgrimage to the secluded native haunts of that rarest of trees, the Torreya taxifolia".

Torreya taxifolia is restricted to limestone bluffs and ravines along the east bank of the Apalachicola River in the central part of the northern Florida Panhandle and immediately adjacent southernmost Georgia.

In North America, the genus found refuge as numerous, but small and isolated, populations in California's coastal mountains and the west slope of the Sierras, which still constitute the native range of Torreya californica.

Torreya taxifolia occurs along limestone bluffs of the eastern shore of the Apalachicola River in a region with a warm and humid climate, occasionally influenced in winter by cold waves from the north that dip temperatures below the freezing point.

The combination of subcanopy shade, a preference for north-facing slopes, and the nearly permanent seeps within the ravines suggest that Torreya taxifolia has already retrenched to the subhabitats within this glacial refugium that offer the coolest conditions during the extremes of summer heat.

[76] In her 2001 book, The Ghosts of Evolution, Connie Barlow suggested that T. taxifolia may be an evolutionary anachronism similar to the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) and Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus), which are thought to have been dispersed by now-extinct megafauna, such as the mastodon.

"[80] The Center for Plant Conservation describes Florida torreya as "one of the rarest conifers in the world," reporting that in the mid-twentieth century it suffered a catastrophic decline, as all reproductive age trees died.

"[82] In its most recent (2020) update to the Florida torreya recovery plan, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the naturally occurring population was continuing to decrease, with little to no reproduction observed and no recruitment in its wild habitat along ravine slopes on the eastern bank of the Apalachicola River.

In a 1904 conference contribution, University of Chicago botanist Henry C. Cowles wrote, "In these ravines, and especially on the northward-facing slopes, is to be found a mesophytic association of plants that is abundant far to the north, but which reaches its southern limit here....

[56]Noting that torreya "appears to occupy sites where a steady supply of moisture is available from seepage, and where it is shady in the summer" (page 6), the plan then offered possible human factors that may have deteriorated those habitat conditions.

[56] With more than 2,000 branchlets cut from the wild and being rooted in facilities at Arnold Arboretum and other institutions,[94] Mark Schwartz joined with Sharon M Hermann in the field to officially catalog "The Continuing Population Decline of Torreya taxifolia", which was published in 1993.

[49] In 1995 Schwartz and Hermann teamed with Cristoph S. Vogel in publishing the results of their field and lab work in assessing a number of environmental variables that could have stressed the torreya population enough to induce one or more pathogens to become lethal.

[8] The update did elevate the significance of the canker disease and how that, in turn, increased the risks not only of assisted migration of the species northward, but of using ex situ plantings of any sort and anywhere for safeguarding the genetic diversity of the tree.

The identity of these fungal infections remains to be confirmed, but these observations indicate there is some risk of Fusarium torreyae being transported with transplanted T. taxifolia to the southern Appalachian Mountains, and the fungus moving onto other threatened species of trees.

Employment swelled in 1935 when a plantation manor that had fallen into disrepair (Jason Gregory House) was dismantled and moved from its location on the west side of the river to its current site, as a centerpiece of the park, on the east.

Torreya taxifolia is also included under Georgia's Wild Flower Preservation Act of 1973 which prohibits taking from public lands and intrastate transport and sale of certain rare plant species.

Downing reported on the success of the plant growing in cultivation: 'Our best specimen is about eight feet high, very dense, showing nothing but foliage, like a thrifty arbor vitae, and remarkable, particularly in winter, for the star-like appearance of the extreme tips of its young shoots.

"[94][8] Because the Smithgall Woods, Vogel State Park, and Blairsville ex situ plantings are each within 30 miles of Georgia's border with North Carolina, they all offer the species not only a cooler climate than the historically native range but also terrain higher in altitude and gently mountainous.

Ultimately, the relative reproductive success of the outplanted groves do not ameliorate the threats currently affecting the species in its native range (i.e. low population number, rarity of habitat, and disease, USFWS 2010).

"[53] Schwartz contended, "Certainly, we do not want to return to a static view of forests and manage our natural lands as museum pieces, but then again we would like to retain an historical basis for the range of variability in composition of plant communities that are representative of the habitats we are trying to conserve (Landres 1999).

[157] As well, in 2022 she wrote of her experience with Torreya Guardians in her supportive comment[158] filed in response to the proposed federal regulation[159] that would eliminate "historical range" as the sole locus for endangered species recovery.

[160]) Schwartz is now emeritus professor, and his homepage lists as one of his foci of continuing research: "Establishing policy for emerging conservation strategies such as assisted migration (mostly in the form of constraining unsanctioned private action).

[165] His early leadership in conservation biology policy development culminated in 2012, when he served as first author, with 31 coauthors, of a paper in process since the 2008 meeting of the Ecological Society of America: "Managed Relocation: Integrating the Scientific, Regulatory, and Ethical Challenges.

A government press release explained, "Updating this proven conservation tool will allow the Service to keep pace with corresponding science, which has shown that climate change and invasive species are pushing plants and animals into completely new geographic areas for the habitat needed for their continued survival.

The official ex situ groves in northern Georgia that were safeguarding wild genetics were being managed by two botanical gardens in ways that eventually resulted in large numbers of seeds remaining uncollected.

As well, because previous experiments in reintroducing the species into its historically native range had failed, and because the two botanical gardens in charge of safeguarding the ex situ plantings were opposed to assisted migration,[175][76][169] annual seed production numbering in the thousands could not fully be put to use.

"[76] The 2010 recovery plan update reported seed production at Smithgall Woods in this way, "The trees have grown quite large and are now reproductively mature producing male and female cones annually.

[154] In general, media coverage of Torreya Guardians as the first example of an assisted migration project underway presented the information as a human-interest story or tilted toward publishing favorable quotations by or about the citizen action.

Examples include: Boston Globe (2008),[182] Orion (2008),[136] Wildlife in North Carolina (2009),[183] Audubon (2010),[154] Los Angeles Times (2011),[184] Landscape Architecture (2014),[155] The Economist (2015),[156] Earth Island Journal (2018),[137] Sierra (2018).