GARDENING – WI TH CAMI L LA BASSE T T-SMI TH
© Gareth Gardner
continents: Asia, Africa, North & South America and Australia. Seventy plant species here are rare or threatened and three are even extinct in the wild. Take a note pad, for what you’ll see here will amaze and surprise.
Known as ‘The loneliest plant in the world’, only one specimen of the cycad Encephalartos woodii has ever been found in the wild, on the edge of South Africa’s Ngoye Forest in 1895. Kew’s example arrived in 1899. All plants in existence today are clones of that original South African plant and are male. So the search for a female continues – maybe there could be an argument for the setting up of a timber Tinder to help?!
Australia’s most threatened Eucalyptus, morrisbyi, becomes a neighbour of the plant responsible for the second most commonly drunk beverage in the world, Camellia sinensis, otherwise known as tea, while a bird-of-paradise watches on, her elegant long neck crowned with the most eye-catching of orange and purple plumage.
The impressive Chilean wine palm can reach mammoth proportions, over 30m in height and has many uses, from using leaves for basket making and sap to making palm syrup. It was not one of Darwin’s favourites, calling it “ugly”, however had he partaken of a few glasses of palm wine (also made from the sap), he may have changed his mind! Years of over harvesting have sadly decimated native forests and experts are now looking at ways of harvesting sap without felling the trees.
Too many plants to mention, but a final treasure is Dombeya mauritiana, declared extinct in 1994, but 15 years later a single specimen was found in Mauritius by a team of Kew’s horticulturalists. Cuttings were taken and propagated at Kew and now you can see it for yourself without the trip to Mauritius (although that does sound tempting!).
Congratulations Temperate team – what a huge achievement – they’ll certainly be queuing for Kew.
© Gareth Gardner
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