“This is surely the loneliest organism in the world,” wrote paleontologist Richard Fortey in his book on the evolution of life.
He spoke about Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a plant from South Africa. E. woodii it is a member of the cycad family, heavy plants with strong trunks and large stiff leaves that form a majestic crown. These hardy survivors survived the dinosaurs and numerous mass extinctions. Once widespread, today they are one of the most endangered species on the planet.
The only known wilderness E. Woodii it was discovered in 1895 by botanist John Medley Wood while on a botanical expedition in the Ngoye Forest in South Africa. He looked around for more, but couldn’t find any. Over the next few decades, botanists removed the stems and rhizomes and cultivated them in gardens.
Fearing that the last stem would be destroyed, the Department of Forestry removed it from the wild in 1916 for safe keeping in a conservation enclosure in Pretoria, South Africa, leaving it extinct in the wild. The plant has since spread throughout the world. However, E. woodii facing an existential crisis. All plants are clones from the Ngoye specimen. They are all male and without a female, natural reproduction is impossible. E. woodii’s the story is one of survival and solitude.
My team’s research was inspired by the dilemma of the solitary plant and the possibility that there might still be a female out there. Our research involves the use of remote sensing and artificial intelligence technologies to assist in the search for the woman in Ngoye Forest.
The evolutionary path of cycads
Cycads are the oldest surviving plant groups alive today and are often referred to as “living fossils” or “dinosaur plants” due to their evolutionary history dating back to the Carboniferous period, approximately 300 million years ago. During the Mesozoic (250-66 million years ago), also known as the Cycad Age, these plants were ubiquitous and thrived in the warm, humid climate that characterized the period.
Although they resemble ferns or palms, cycads are not related to either. Cycads are gymnosperms, a group that includes conifers and cycads. Unlike flowering plants (angiosperms), cycads reproduce using cones. It is impossible to tell the male and female apart until they mature and form their beautiful cones.
Female cones are typically wide and round, and male cones appear elongated and narrower. The male cones produce pollen that is carried by insects (weevils) to the female cones. This ancient method of reproduction has remained largely unchanged for millions of years.
Despite their longevity, cycads are now ranked as the most endangered living organisms on Earth, with most species considered threatened with extinction. This is due to their slow growth and reproductive cycles, which typically take ten to 20 years to mature, and habitat loss due to deforestation, grazing, and overharvesting. Cycads have become symbols of botanical rarity.
Due to their striking appearance and ancient origins, they are popular in exotic ornamental horticulture, which has led to illegal trade. Rare cycads can fetch exorbitant prices from $620 (£495) per cm, with some specimens selling for millions of pounds. Poaching of cycads is a threat to their survival.
Among the most valuable species are E. woodii. In botanic gardens, it is protected by security measures such as alarm cages to deter poachers.
AI in the sky
In our search we find a female E. woodii we used innovative technologies to explore areas of the forest from a vertical perspective. In 2022 and 2024, our drone surveys covered an area of ​​195 acres, or 148 football fields, creating detailed maps from thousands of drone photos. It is still a small part of the Ngoye Forest, which covers 10,000 acres.
Our artificial intelligence system has increased the efficiency and accuracy of these searches. As E. woodii is considered extinct in the wild, synthetic images were used in training the AI ​​model to improve its ability to recognize cycads by shape in different ecological contexts using an image recognition algorithm.
Plant species are disappearing worldwide at an alarming rate. From all existing ones E. woodii specimens are clones, their potential for genetic diversity in the face of environmental change and disease is limited.
Notable examples include the Great Famine in Ireland in the 1840s, where the uniformity of cloned potatoes exacerbated the crisis, and the vulnerability of cloned Cavendish bananas to Panama disease, which threatened their production, as was the case with Gros Michel bananas in the 1950s 20 . century.
Finding a female would mean E. woodii is no longer on the verge of extinction and could revive the species. A female would enable sexual reproduction, bring genetic diversity and mark a breakthrough in conservation efforts.
E. woodii is a sobering reminder of the fragility of life on Earth. But our quest to discover a woman E. woodii it shows that there is hope for even the most endangered species if we act fast enough.
Laura Cinti, Researcher in Bioart and Plant Behavior, University of Southampton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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