Palm Sunday

 with Ekaterina Novikova:

Scientists Seek Mate for Lonely Palm. Krueger2Canyon, Searching for a female partner for the world’s ‘loneliest’ plant

The only known wild E. woodii was discovered in 1895 by the botanist John Medley Wood while he was on a botanical expedition in the Ngoye Forest in South Africa. He searched the vicinity for others, but none could be found. Over the next couple of decades, botanists removed stems and offshoots and cultivated them in gardens.

Fearing that the final stem would be destroyed, the Forestry Department removed it from the wild in 1916 for safekeeping in a protective enclosure in Pretoria, South Africa, making it extinct in the wild. The plant has since been propagated worldwide. However, the E. woodii faces an existential crisis. All the plants are clones from the Ngoye specimen. They are all males, and without a female, natural reproduction is impossible. E. woodii’s story is one of both survival and solitude.
. . .
Cycads are the oldest surviving plant groups alive today and are often referred to as “living fossils” or “dinosaur plants” due to their evolutionary history dating back to the Carboniferous period, approximately 300 million years ago. During the Mesozoic era (250 – 66 million years ago), also known as the Age of Cycads, these plants were ubiquitous, thriving in the warm, humid climates that characterised the period.

Although they resemble ferns or palms, cycads are not related to either. Cycads are gymnosperms, a group that includes conifers and ginkgos. Unlike flowering plants (angiosperms), cycads reproduce using cones. It is impossible to tell male and female apart until they mature and produce their magnificent cones.
. . .
In our search to find a female E.woodii we have used innovative technologies to explore areas of the forest from a vertical vantage point. In 2022 and 2024, our drone surveys covered an area of 195 acres or 148 football fields, creating detailed maps from thousands of photos taken by the drones. It’s still a small portion of the Ngoye Forest, which covers 10 000 acres.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Welcome, Indiana! up at The Other McCain.