WOOD’S CYCAD is a striking plant, tall with a shaggy green crown and bright orange cones. But despite its good looks, it will never find a mate. “The loneliest plant in the world, right here,” a guide tells a golf cart full of visitors touring the Durban Botanic Gardens. Found in a Zululand forest in 1895, it is the only cycad of its kind, and a male. Without a female it will never reproduce sexually, though offshoots have been used to make clones of it. The sense of its isolation is magnified by the security cameras trained on the plant to thwart thieves.
Cycads, which resemble spiky palm trees and bear pineapple-shaped seed cones, trace their lineage to the time of the dinosaurs. But some species might not be around much longer. They are the world’s most threatened plant group, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
South Africa’s cycads, most of which are found nowhere else in the world, are especially threatened, despite laws...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2yA2YUu
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