Plant Thought to be Extinct Rediscovered in South Africa

An indigenous plant which was declared extinct in 2007 has been rediscovered at Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa. Unfortunately, it still needs to be protected from roadworks that are starting in preparation for the 2010 World Cup of Soccer in South Africa.

Aspalathus recurvispina is a plant of the same Genus as that from which the internationally known Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) herbal tea is made. It is Rooibos that is pictured above as photos of the believed to be distinct plant are hard to come by.

A. recurvispina was first collected and identified on the fringe of the Humewood coastal bypass dunes near Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela Bay) in the early 1960s.

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Starting in 2000 it was not identified in various surveys and field trips. It was classified extinct in the Interim Red Data List of South African Plant Taxa of 2007 maintained by South African National Botanical Institute. This was accepted as being a consequence of the intense housing development that had taken place in Humewood.

That was until Domitilla Raimondo, national coordinator of the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers (CREW), was on her way to the airport to fly home and stopped off at an open patch of land in Humewood. There she spotted a sprawling, low, green bushy shrub and took samples of what she thought to be another extinct plant. However, tests showed it was A recurvispina and an extinct plant was no longer extinct.

A recurvispina is a “Lazarus Plant”, a term conservationists reserve for plants thought extinct but later rediscovered. However, the total identified habitat is small, alongside a busy road and adjacent to a residential area so threatened by development being pushed ahead to meet the demands of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

CREW are investigating means of protecting the existing habitat and of cultivating A recurvispina off site in a more secure environment, but these are difficult undertaking which take time. But at least A recurvispina is now classified as “critically endangered” and its situation known.

Photo Credit: By Winfried Bruenken (Amrum) in Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license.

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