A Quick Update,

on a post we made way back in April 2015,

the loneliest pine in the world is still lonely! we first mentioned Encephalartos woodii, back in 2015, it is a cycad which are a very old order of tree and it turns out this one, which is still there in London, may be the very last tree of its kind on our planet and this is why, these trees cannot fertilise themselves, some plants contain male and female parts on the same individual, well the sad news is that a mate has still not been found, researchers have long been scouring the forests of Africa in search of a female Encephalartos woodii, but so far their efforts have been unsuccessful, “Surely this is the most solitary organism in the world,” biologist Richard Fortey once wrote, “growing older, alone, and fated to have no successors. Nobody knows how long it will live.” Sir David Attenborough said at the opening of the Temperate House at the Royal Botanical Gardens. “Plant species can go extinct and there is one cycad here which is the only one specimen of its kind known, it is a lonely plant, like the Galapagos tortoise. Human beings are taking over so much of the planet and the climate is changing so that areas where plants once grew they can’t grow anymore. There is nowhere else for them to go, except they can be kept here.” hopefully botanists will keep searching, you never know like the coelacanth thought to be extinct for the past 70 million years or so, a few just might just appear!