Global climate change is the root cause of the endangerment of species of not flora and fauna. Generally, deforestation is the prime reason for more than 17,500 species of trees being threatened with extinction. This is twice the number of endangered mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles combined. Many botanists and plant conservationists are working to find alternative methods to protect these trees from extinction.
Paul Smith, head of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), said, “We shouldn’t be giving up on any tree species.” BGCI seeks to secure the future of the world’s threatened tree species.
With the decision to conserve the loneliest trees, Vishwambharan Sarasan, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, near London, worked for years to retrieve the seeds of the last living palm of its family, Hyophorbe Amari caulis aka the lonesome palm. This palm grows in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens, Mauritius. In 2006, Sarasan decided to take a few seeds and culture them back at Kew.
“It was the only shot I could get. But I didn’t want to take all the seeds and then it turns out badly”, Sarasan said.
With few seeds in hand, culturing the seeds with different media, there was a fear of losing the seeds. “I was so protective. It was the responsibility, the excitement, and also the fear of losing it”, added Sarasan.
These plantlets grew 25 centimeters long but the fine white fine roots turned brown and died due to the culture medium.
Jose Luis Marcelo Pena, a taxonomist at the National University of Jaen in Peru, walking through the forest in the Peru Maranon valley, identified a tree with light green flowers named, Pradosia Argentea and thought it to be extinct.
He said, “it was a unique happiness that cannot be described.” A survey revealed that more than 200 trees in the area are threatened by agriculture.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, he began extracting the seeds by remotely working with BGCI. He retrieved 400 seeds from the purple fruit at home. But more than 60 seeds germinated and only 20 survived. Later, he attempted again using fresh seeds but a fungus got on them.
“It’s a big responsibility”, Pena said. “Local people were unaware of P. argentea until recently”, he added. The local people now are in support of protecting the remaining trees but space for farming is required.
The BGCI introduced a project on Malawi’s Mount Mulanje, which is home to the cypress Widdringtonia whytei. Only seven mature trees remained while the rest were victims of illegal deforestation in 2019. This year, local people along with Malawi’s Forestry Research Institute, the population of the tree has increased to 500, 000 seedlings. Culturing these trees has become a source of livelihood for the local people of the area.
Working on a tiny population of a species in Tanzania, named, Karomia gigas, a seed-biology specialist Fandey Mashimba assumed these trees to be extinct in the 1980s but 2011 it was six of them were re-discovered by a botanist from the University Dar es Salaam. Mashimba in collaboration with Tanzania’s Forest Service protected these seeds from getting the fungus on them by multiplying the seeds for planting.
Mashimba and his colleagues worked on germinating the seeds but only three plants survived. In 2018, the forest service transferred 6,000 fruits to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Roy Gereau, a botanist extracted 24,000 seeds that produced only 30 plants. In 2021, a small, pale purple flower died within a day.
Mashimba attempted cross-pollination. After finding a single female seed in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in the UK, the scientist dispatched cuttings to the near male seeds. Gunter Fischer, a restoration ecologist at Missouri Botanical Garden, said, “When they flower, reproduction can begin. But this could take 30 years.”
