A recent study published in the scientific journal Nature Plants revealed the discovery of 17 plant species once thought to be extinct. Native mainly to the Mediterranean basin in Europe, these species have been found in different ways: three of them in the wild, two in European botanical gardens and seed banks, and the rest reclassified “through an extensive taxonomic revision” – that is, they had been classified as extinct but actually still existed somewhere in the world.
It all started when a team led by researchers from Roma Tre University suspected that plants cataloged as extinct in the scientific literature would actually still be alive. They then analyzed 36 European endemic species whose conservation status was considered “extinct” based on monitoring nature and contact with seed banks and botanical gardens.
It was concluded that four officially extinct species have reappeared in nature, such as the Ligusticum albanicum Javorska, a member of the celery family that was rediscovered in the Albanian mountains. In addition, seven species once thought to be extinct are now seen as synonymous with living plants, such as the centaurea saxatilis (K. Koch) BD Jacks, who is now recognized as the Centaurea raphanina Sm., widely found in Greece. Three other species have been misidentified in the past, including the Nolletia chrysocomoides (Desf.) Cass. in Spain, which should be grouped with galatella malacitana Blanca, Gavira and Suár.-Sant.
The study also revealed the existence of species such as philago neglecta (Soy.-Will.) DC., H. hethlandiae, Astragalus nitidiflorus, Ornithogalum visianicum It is arcuata armory, formerly considered extinct. The latter is an endemic species of the southwest coast of Lusitania whose last records date from the end of the 19th century. Through the study, researchers found the species preserved in the Botanical Garden of the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. However, some confirmation studies are still needed, since the plant was missing for 150 years and there may have been some misidentification.
According to one of the authors of the study, David Draper, «the investigation required a thorough detective work, especially to verify information, often inaccurate, reported from one source to another, without due verification.» Still according to the researcher, the pandemic of Covid-19 contributed to the difficulty at work, since it caused the closure of the laboratories.
The researchers consider the results highly promising. “Thanks to these results, Europe is ‘recovering’ biodiversity, an important step towards achieving the international targets established by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations for Sustainable Development”, said Draper.
However, they also leave a warning: “we must not forget that the results confirm that the remaining 19 species that we analyzed were lost forever. It is fundamental to prevent extinctions – prevention is certainly more viable than eventual attempts to resurrect species through genetic material, an area that is for the time being purely theoretical and with strong technical and technological limits”, concluded the researcher.