The Last of its Species: The Critically Endangered Cycad Plants
By: Vanessa Visnovits
Tags: Conservation, Plants, South Africa, Kirstenbosch, Endangered

One of the rarest plants in the world, very large and palm tree like has survived the destruction of the dinosaurs, made it through five ice ages, but now there is only one of them left and I was standing right in front of it at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa. I felt like the soil beneath my feet was worth its weight in gold because it contained a history that goes all the way back to the first fossil records ever made and they belong to the cycad plants. Disturbances such as habitat fragmentation and collecting activities have placed all cycads in danger to human induced extinction (Golding and Hurter 507). Among the cycads that are going extinct is the loneliest cycad in the world: The Encephalartos Woodii commonly referred to as Wood’s Cycad. The Wood’s Cycad is famous for being extinct in nature and for having no female counterpart to mate with. Although the ancient Wood’s Cycad will never to our knowledge find a natural female of its kind to mate with, hope is not lost. This is our opportunity to promote new conservation measures in the form of more protected areas and reserves with more security staffing to save other cycads from reaching the same lonely and caged off fate.

The chances of the Woods Cycad ever reproducing naturally are zero to none unless its partner is out there and has yet to be found. However, for now botanists are in what is called crisis management and are creating the next best thing: hybrid clones. The female E. Natalensis has been coupled and is now producing hybrid clones with a DNA structure being the closest match to the Wood’s Cycad (Robert Krulwich). In time the hope is that each generation of female clone offspring can be mated with the original Wood’s Cycad plant and eventually create a very close genetic version of a female E. Woodii and reboot the species (Robert Krulwich). What about all the other cycads that I saw in the botanical garden? The Encephalartos latifrons are critically endangered but with our help can be saved from extinction.

Cycads like the Encephalartos latifrons are being poached due to their long prehistoric fossil lifespan and are being sold on the black market for millions of dollars. The poaching along with habitat loss has caused individual cycads in the wild to be further apart then they normally would be, and that means they cannot pollinate one another to reproduce (Smith, David). To help give a visual, if we would put all the endangered cycad species together from all South Africa there would only be about 10,000 plants! That is about half of what’s left of the White Rhino population. Let’s think about it, cycads didn’t survive hundreds of millions of years for nothing! They are slow growing, tough, durable, and can be left out of the ground for months before being replanted. Unfortunately, those strengths are also what makes them so vulnerable to poachers who wish to steal them for hardcore collectors (Smith, David). To prevent the loss of more precious cycads there needs to be more security staffing and not only at places like the botanical gardens but any place that is a national park with cycad plants living there in the wild before they all end up extinct or as lonely as the Wood’s Cycad.

Works Cited

Golding, Janice S, and P. Johan H Hurter. “Biodiversity and Conservation.” A Red List Account of Africa’s Cycads and Implications of Considering Life-History and Threats, vol. 12, no. 3, 27 Feb. 2003, pp. 507–525., doi:10.1007/10531.1572–9710.

Krulwich, Robert. “Does the Loneliest Plant in the World Need Help?” National Geographic, 1 Feb. 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/02/01/does-the-loneliest-plant-in-the-world-need-help/.

“Wood’s Cycad.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas Obscura, 29 May 2013, www.atlasobscura.com/places/wood-s-cycad.

Smith, David. “South Africa’s Ancient Cycad Plants under Threat from Poachers.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 1 Sept. 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/ancient-cycad-plants-under-threat-poachers.