Scientists have confirmed the rediscovery of two tree species that were feared to have gone extinct twice, according to a report in the Journal of East African Natural History. These discoveries were made in highly threatened fragments of dry forest in coastal Tanzania. One of the trees, Erythrina schliebenii, belongs to the genus of ‘coral trees,’ known for their spectacular red flowers and spiny trunks. This species was originally known from two collections in the 1930s and was rediscovered in 2001 in a small, unprotected forest patch. However, it was feared to have gone extinct again when a Dutch company cleared parts of that forest for a biofuel plantation in 2008. The other tree, Karomia gigas, was first discovered in coastal Kenya in 1977, with its only known specimen cut down a few years later. Another specimen was found 600 km away in a tiny forest fragment in Tanzania in 1993, but a subsequent search at that site failed to relocate it.
Last year, botanists from the University of Dar es Salaam embarked on a mission to search for both trees near their previous locations. They discovered small populations of both species in remote coastal forests near Kilwa in southeast Tanzania. For the first time, Erythrina schliebenii was collected with mature seeds, allowing taxonomists at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew to confirm it as a distinct species. This identification was made possible by consulting reference collections of coral tree specimens housed in herbaria around the world. Read more here