Echium vulcanorum

Echium vulcanorum is a plant species that belongs to the Boraginaceae family, the borage family. It is found only in the Fogo island, Cape Verde.

It was discovered and named by the French botanist Auguste Jean Baptiste Chevalier. He found the plant with flowers on July 1934. Available on pdf at TelaBotanica

Common names
It is locally known as lingua de vaca ("tongue of cow") because their leaves are rough. The same name is used for the other species of Echium that are found in Cape Verde: Echium hypertropicum and Echium stenosiphon.

Description
It is a shrub with many branches, up to 1.5–2 m tall. The stems are covered with many hairs. The leaves are lanceolates (pointed at both ends) up to 10 cm long and 1.5 wide.

The flowers are in dense inflorescences (groups of flowers), almost  conical, up to 18 cm long, with white flowers with blue stripes.

Where it grows
Echium vulcanorum is endemic of the Cape Verdean island of Fogo on the volcano Pico do Fogo. It occurs on volcanic soils of Fogo Island, mainly as two populations at Monte Losna/Pico Novo, where they can be found at about 1700 m, and in the border of the crater of the Pico do Fogo (the Bordeira region ) at altitudes between 2200 and 2400 m. A small population was also reported in Chã das Caldeiras (±1600 m). These populations exist generally in places facing to the southwest or the southeast. It prefers soils with a recent volcanic origin.

Conservation
Echium vulcanorum is used for the production of firewood (dry wood that will be burned) and destroyed by goats, so this species, as well as the other two Echium species of Cape Verde, is seriously threatened, so that measures for its protection should be taken with urgency.

Some conservation actions have been done at the Bordeira region (in the Natural Park of Fogo Island) and now there is a population with a relatively high number of individuals.

References

Other websites

 Echium vulcanorum at NCBI, retrieved on 19 August 2013
 Echium vulcanorum at uBio, retrieved on 19 August 2013

Category:Boraginaceae
Category:Cape Verde