Halfway through their two-year project to map some of the rarest plants in the world, National Parks Trust officers and representatives from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, say their work has already yielded some important discoveries, such as two new spots in Sage Mountain National Park where the rare Miconia thomasiana grows.
The project, funded by Darwin Plus, a United Kingdom fund for overseas territories environmental study and conservation, includes location-mapping of plants found only in this part of the Caribbean — and in some cases only on one or two islands in this territory.
One plant mapped by the team was the Senna polyphylla var. neglecta, a bean tree found only on Anegada.
“Last December, we knew of just a couple dozen trees on the entire island,” said Martin Hamilton, Kew’s lead officer on the project, during a briefing at the J. R. O’Neal Botanic Gardens on Friday.
Mr. Hamilton said that during this trip, the team discovered a new population of the trees on the sister island, which “is probably the most significant population of the species in the world.”
See the March 27, 2014 edition for full coverage.