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Encephalartos woodii Sander (1908:257)

Wood's cycad, Wood-se-broodboom

 

 

Taxonomy & Nomenclature

Synonym/s: Encephalartos altensteinii var. bispinnus J.M.Wood in Ann. Rep. Bot. Gard. Natal 1907: 8 (1907)

 

Conservation Status

Extinct in the wild (Scott-Shaw, 1999; Raimondo et al., 2009; Bösenberg, 2022; POWO, 2024)

Last record: 1916 (Bösenberg, 2022)

IUCN RedList status: Extinct in the Wild

 

"Originally described from a single male plant with multiple stems. No other plants were ever found. Some of the original stems were killed through bark harvesting and the last wild plants had been transferred to botanic gardens by 1916."

(Donaldson, 2010b)

 

Distribution

Ngoye Forest, northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

 

Biology & Ecology

 

 

Hypodigm

 

 

Media

Above: specimen in the Durban Botanic Gardens. Photo by Bernard Dupont in 2018 (CC 2.0). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

 

References

Original scientific description:

Sander, Henry in: Pearson, R. H. (1908). New plants at Ghent. Gard. Chron. 43(1113): 257.

 

Other references:

Boon, R. (2010). Pooley's Trees of eastern South Africa. Durban: Flora and Fauna Publications Trust.

Bösenberg, J. D. (2022). Encephalartos woodii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: e.T41881A51057496. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-1.RLTS.T41881A51057496.en. Accessed on 15 October 2023.

Calonje, M., Stevenson, D. W. and Osborne, R. (2023). The World List of Cycads, online edition [Internet]. 2013-2023. Available from: https://www.cycadlist.org/ [Accessed 20 October 2023]

Christenhusz, M. and Govaerts, R. (2023). Uitgestorven. Op plantenjacht rond de wereld: 1-511. Sterck & De Vreese.

Crouch, N. R., Smith, G. F., Lotter, M. and Symmonds, R. (2003). Encephalartos woodii - the historically documented ethnomedicinal plant in Southern Africa. Encephalartos 73: 25-28.

Dalrymple, S. E., Abeli, T., Ewen, J. G., Gilbert, T. C., Hogg, C. J., Lloyd, N. A., Moehrenschlager, A., Rodríguez, J. P. and Smith, D. (2023). Addressing Threats and Ecosystem Intactness to Enable Action for Extinct in the Wild Species. Diversity 15: 268. https://doi.org/10.3390/d15020268

Donaldson, John S. (ed.). (2003). Cycads. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN/SSC Cycad Specialist Group. Gland, Switzerland & Cambridge, UK: IUCN. ix + 86 pp.

Donaldson, J. S. (2009). Encephalartos woodii Sander. National Assessment: Red List of South African Plants version 2017.1. Accessed on 2017/06/05.

Donaldson, J. S. (2010a). Encephalartos woodii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.3. (http://www.iucnredlist.org). Downloaded on 14 February 2015.

Donaldson, J. S. (2010b). Encephalartos woodii (errata version published in 2016). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010: e.T41881A92750886. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2010-3.RLTS.T41881A10566412.en. Accessed on 10 June 2022.

Dyer, R. A. (1965). Encephalartos. Bothalia 8(4): 432-514. [automatic download]

Gorelick, Root and Osborne, Roy. (2002). Inducing sex change and organogenesis from tissue culture in the endangered African cycad Encephalartos woodii (Cycadales, Zamiaceae): commentary. South African Journal of Science 98(3-4): 114-117.

Hall, A. V., De Winter, M., De Winter, B. and Van Oosterhout, S. A. M. (1980). Threatened plants of southern Africa. South African National Scienctific Programmes Report 45. CSIR, Pretoria.

Hawkes, J. G., Maxted, N. and Ford-Lloyd, B. V. (2000). Field Gene Banks, Botanic Gardens [i]In Vitro[/i], DNA and Pollen Conservation, pp. 92-107. In: The Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Haynes, Jody L. (2008). World list of cycads: a historical review. IUCN/SSC Cycad Specialist Group. 35 pp.

Henderson, M. R. (1945). Materials for a revision of the South African species of Encephalartos. J. S. African Bot. 11: 3-65 [47-50, fig. 12].

Hilton-Taylor, C. (1996). Red data list of southern African plants. Strelitzia 4. South African National Botanical Institute, Pretoria.

Holmes, Branden. (2021). What's Lost and What Remains: The Sixth Extinction in 100 Accounts (eBook). Self published.

Humphreys, Aelys M., Govaerts, Rafaël, Ficinski, Sarah Z., Lughadha, Eimear Nic and Vorontsova, Maria S. (2019). Global dataset shows geography and life form predict modern plant extinction and rediscovery. Nature Ecology & Evolution 3: 1043-1047. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0906-2 [Supplementary Dataset 1]

Hurter, M. (2008). The different Encephalartos woodii plants. Encephalartos 94: 31-35.

Hutchinson, J. and Rattray, G. (1933) Cycadaceae. Fl. Cap. (Harvey) 5(2): 24-44 [40-41, fig. 8].

Jolivet, P. (2005). Cycads and beetles: recent views on pollination. The Cycad Newsletter 28: 3-7.

Joubert, L., Grobbelaar, N. and Coetzee, J. (1989). In situ studies of the ultrastructure of the Cyanobacteria in the coralloid roots of Encephalartos arenarius, E. transvenosus and E. woodii (Cycadales). Phycologia 28(2): 197-205. [Abstract]

Le Roux, Johannes J., Hui, C., Castillo, M. L., Iriondo, J. M., Keet, J.-H., Khapugin, A. A., Médail, F., Rejmánek, M., Theron, G. Yannelli, F. A. and Hirsch, H. (2019). Recent Anthropogenic Plant Extinctions Differ in Biodiversity Hotspots and Coldspots. Current Biology 29(17): 2912-2918.e2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.07.063

Mohammad, F. et a. (1983). Biflavones from Encephalartos woodii, E. transvenosus & E. villosus Lem. (Zamiaceae). Indian J Chem Sect B Org incl Med 22(2): 184.

Osborne R. (1985). Sex change in cycads — hope for woodii. Encephalartos 2: 20-22.

Osborne, R. (1986). Focus on Encephalartos woodii. Encephalartos 5: 4-10.

Pereira, Maria João et al. (2020). Green Gardens Azores Project: A brief characterization of the vascular flora in the Azores’ historical gardens. Scientia Insularum: Revista de Ciencias Naturales en islas 3: 11-26.

POWO. (2024). Encephalartos woodii Sander. Plants of the World Online (online resource). Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom. Available at: https://powo.science.kew.org/ [Accessed 4 February 2024]

Prakash, S. et al. (2008). Diversity in Encephalartos woodii collections based on Random Amplified DNA markers (RAPD's) and Inter-Specific Sequence Repeats (ISSR's). South African Journal of Botany 74(2): 341-344. [Abstract]

Pyne, Lydia. (2022). Endlings: Fables for the Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Raimondo, D., von Staden, L., Foden, W., Victor, J. E., Helme, N. A., Turner, R. C., Kamundi, D. A. and Manyama, P. A. (2009). Red List of South African Plants. Strelitzia 25. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria.

Scott-Shaw, C. R. (1999). Rare and threatened plants of KwaZulu-Natal and neighbouring regions. KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service, Pietermaritzburg.

Smith, Donal et al. (2023). Extinct in the wild: The precarious state of Earth’s most threatened group of species. Science 379(6634): eadd2889. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.add2889

van Jaarsveld, Ernst Jacobus and Welsh, Rob. (1995). In search of Encephalartos woodii: An expedition to Ngoye Forest. Veld & Flora 81(2): 40-42.

Viljoen, C. D. and van Staden, J. (2006). The genetic relationship between Encephalartos natalensis and E. woodii determined using RAPD fingerprinting. South African Journal of Botany 72(4): 642-645. [Abstract]

Walter, Kerry S. and Gillett, Harriet J. (eds.). (1998). 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants. Compiled by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Gland, Switzerland & Cambridge, UK: IUCN – The World Conservation Union. lxiv + 862 pp.

Whitelock, L. M. (2002) The Cycads. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press.

Williams, V. L., Victor, J. E. and Crouch, N. R. (2013). Red Listed medicinal plants of South Africa: Status, trends, and assessment challenges. South African Journal of Botany 86: 23-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sajb.2013.01.006

Wood, J. Medley. (1908). Colonial note. Encephalartos woodii. Gard. Chron. (3) 43: 414.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/05/03/worlds-loneliest-plant-looking-love-newly-restored-temperate/

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wood-s-cycad

https://vanishingflora.proboards.com/thread/3/wood-cycad-encephalartos-woodii