The one know exemplar of Encephalartos woodii, a Cycad:
The only known wild plants of E. woodii were a cluster of four stems of one plant discovered by Wood in 1895 in a small area of Ngoya Forest,[7] now known by its proper Zulu name of Ongoye, which is in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.[8] The site where this plant was found was on a steep south-facing slope[2][9] on the fringes of the forest.[9] The annual rainfall at the site ranges between 750–1,000 millimetres (30–39 in), and the climate has hot summers and mild winters.[2]
A basal offset of the main stems was removed and sent to Kew Gardens in 1899.[2] Three basal offsets were collected by Wood's deputy, James Wylie, in 1903 and planted in the Durban Botanic Gardens.[9] One specimen was received at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland in Glasnevin in 1905[10] where the register records it as "Encephalartos way of E. Alten[steinii]" costing 1 guinea from Sander & Sons.[11] In a 1907 expedition, Wylie collected two of the larger stems and noted that of the remaining two, one of them (the largest of the four original stems) was badly mutilated and he did not expect it to survive.[9] By 1912 there was only one 3 metres (9.8 ft) tall trunk left in the wild, and in 1916, the Forestry Department arranged to have it removed and sent to the Government Botanist in Pretoria.[9] It is thought that this trunk subsequently died in 1964.[9]
These plants are currently distributed in various botanical institutions around the world.[2] Two of the larger trunks that Wylie collected in the 1907 expedition are still to be seen in the Durban Botanic Gardens.[9] A sucker from one of the Durban Botanic Gardens plants was sent to Kirstenbosch near Cape Town, South Africa in 1916 by James Wylie.[9] The plant that was sent to Kew Gardens in 1899 was grown in the Palm House until April 1997 and then moved to the Temperate House where it produced, for the first time, a male cone in September 2004.[12] In the United States; a specimen is housed in the conservatory at Longwood Gardens near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania[13] and three specimens are to be seen at Lotus Land in Santa Barbara, California[14][15] where they were planted in 1979.[16] The specimen at Longwood Gardens was received in 1969 after a request was made to the Durban Botanic Gardens by one of Longwood’s former directors, Dr. Russell Seibert, when he went on a plant exploration voyage to South Africa in the 1960s.[17] The rooted plant was first taken to the Research Department at Longwood where the gardeners nurtured the plant until it was ready to be displayed in the Conservatory.[17] The Longwood specimen produces cones in early winter.[17] In Europe; a specimen is housed in the Netherlands at Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam[18][19] and in Orto Botanico di Napoli in Italy,[20] although this specimen may have died.[21] The specimen in Ireland at Glasnevin is said to be "probably the tallest" specimen of E. woodii in Europe.[10]
Despite numerous excursions in the Ongoye-Mtunzini area, no other specimens of Encephalartos woodii have ever been found. All known specimens of Encephalartos woodii are clones of the only known male plant which was completely removed from the wild. For these reasons, the plant is considered extinct in the wild.[1]
Cycads are seed plants typically characterized by a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk with a crown of large, hard and stiff, evergreen leaves. They usually have pinnately compound leaves. The individual plants are either all male or all female (dioecious). Cycads vary in size from having a trunk that is only a few centimeters tall to trunks up to several meters tall. They typically grow very slowly and live very long, with some specimens known to be as much as 1,000 years old. Because of their superficial appearance, they are sometimes confused with and mistaken for palms or ferns, but are only distantly related to both.
The cycad fossil record dates to the early Permian, 280 mya (million years ago). There is controversy over older cycad fossils that date to the late Carboniferous period, 300–325 mya. One of the first colonizers of terrestrial habitats, this clade probably diversified extensively within its first few million years, although the extent to which it radiated is unknown because relatively few fossil specimens have been found. The regions to which cycads are restricted probably indicate their former distribution in the Pangea before the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana separated (Hermsen et al. 2006).
Two hundred million years ago, cycads were everywhere. Cycad forests reached from Greenland to Antarctica (though the continents were not where they are now). Pterodactyls flew through them. Big dinosaurs munched on them. During the Jurassic period, small, stumpy palm-looking trees made up about 20% of the world's plants.
Somehow these E. woodii survived the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs, got through five different ice ages, learned to live with bigger, newer trees, conifers, leaf bearers, then a profusion of fruiting and flowering plants, got pushed into smaller, then even smaller spaces until there were merely tens of thousands, then thousands, then hundreds and then, perhaps, just this one.
About 23% of the 305 extant cycad species are either critically endangered or endangered, and 15% are vulnerable. Thus, 38% of cycads are on the IUCN Red List (2004), and the other 62% are in the Least concern or Near Threatened category (i.e. not actually on the Red List), or are data deficient. This value has changed dramatically within the past few years; 46% of cycads were on the 1978 Red List, and this rose to 82% in 1997. This was largely due to the recent discovery of over 150 new species, disagreements about classification, and uncertainty. This has not been helpful for conservation planning for the group.
Zamia in the New World, Cycas in Asia and Encephalartos in Africa are the most threatened genera. This pattern reflects the pressures on species in these regions. At least two species, Encephalartos woodii and Encephalartos relictus (both from Africa), are confirmed extinct in the wild. Cycads are long-lived with infrequent reproduction, and most populations are small, putting them at risk of extinction from habitat destruction and stochastic environmental events. Regionally, Australian cycads are the least at risk, as they are locally common and habitat fragmentation is low. However, land management with fire is thought to be a threat to Australian species. African cycads are rare and are thought to be naturally decreasing due to small population sizes, and there is controversy over whether to let natural extinction processes act on these cycads.
Comments