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Melhania erythroxylon (G.Forst.) R.Br.

Redwood, St Helena redwood

 

 

Taxonomy & Nomenclature

Synonym/s: Pentapetes erythroxylon G.Forst. in Commentat. Soc. Regiae Sci. Gott. 9: 61 (1789); Dombeya erythroxylon (G.Forst.) Willd. in Sp. Pl. ed. 4. 3: 725 (1800); Trochetia erythroxylon (G.Forst.) Benth. in J. Proc. Linn. Soc., Bot. 6: 116 (1862); Trochetiopsis erythroxylon (G.Forst.) Marais in Kew Bull. 36: 645 (1981)

 

Conservation Status

Extinct in the wild

Last record: 1950's

IUCN RedList status: Extinct in the Wild

 

"The last wild St Helena Redwood tree (Trochetiopsis erythroxylon) died in the 1950s. Small numbers of cultivated specimens have been replanted in wild situations since the 1980s, but many of these have fared poorly and no recruitment has been observed."

(Lambdon & Ellick, 2016)

 

Distribution

St. Helena

 

Biology & Ecology

 

 

Hypodigm

 

 

Media

 

 

References

America, S. (1999). St Helena. Biodiversity: the UK Overseas Territories, 101.

Banks, J. 1896. Journal of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks during Captain Cook’s first voyage in HMS Endeavour. Hooker, J.D. (ed.). Macmillan & Co., London, U.K.

Beatson, A. 1816. An alphabetical list of plants seen by Dr Roxburgh growing on the island of St Helena. Tracts relative to the Island of St Helena, Appendix 1. W.Bulmer & Co., London, U.K.

Burchell, W.J. 1805-10. Flora Insulae Sanctae Helenae. Unpublished manuscript held at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, U.K.

Cairns-Wicks, R. (2003). Trochetiopsis erythroxylon. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.3. (http://www.iucnredlist.org). Downloaded on 26 April 2015.

Cairns-Wicks, R. Draft Recovery Action Plan for Trochetiopsis erythroxylon (Sterculiaceae)

Cronk, Quentin C. B. (1983). The decline of the redwood Trochetiopsis erythroxylon on St Helena. Biological Conservation 26(2): 163-174.

Cronk, Quentin C. B. (2000). The Endemic Flora of St. Helena. Anthony Nelson Publishers, Oswestry, UK.

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

Dorr, Laurance J. and Wurdack, Kenneth J. (2021). Indo-Asian Eriolaena expanded to include two Malagasy genera, and other generic realignments based on molecular phylogenetics of Dombeyoideae (Malvaceae). Taxon 70(1): 99-126. https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12370

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

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]

Lambdon, P. W. (2012). Flowering Plants and Ferns of St Helena. Pisces Publications, Newbury, UK.

Lambdon, P. W. and Ellick, S. (2016). Trochetiopsis erythroxylon. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T30560A67371983. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-1.RLTS.T30560A67371983.en. Accessed on 10 June 2022.

Lucas, Gren L. l. and Synge, Hugh. (compilers). (1978). The IUCN Plant Red Data Book. Morges, Switzerland: IUCN.

Marais, W. (1981). Trochetiopsis (Sterculiaceae), a new genus from St Helena. Kew Bulletin 36: 645-646. [Abstract]

Melliss, J.C. 1875. St Helena: A Physical, Historical and Topographical Description of the Island, Including its Geology, Fauna, Flora and Meteorology. L. Reeve & Co., London, U.K.

Le Péchon, Timothée et al. (2015). Diversification of Dombeyoideae (Malvaceae) in the Mascarenes: old taxa on young islands? Int. J. Plant Sci. 176(3): 211-221.

Rowe, R. (1995). The population biology of Trochetiopsis: a genus endemic to St Helena. DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford.

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

Vojtek, Ján. (2020). Refining extinction estimations for plants of the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs). MSc dissertation, Queen Mary, University of London. https://doi.org/10.34885/185

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.

WCSP (2003). World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Published on the Internet; http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/

http://vanishingflora.proboards.com/thread/1/st-helena-redwood-trochetiopsis-erythroxylon

 

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