Café marron
Encyclopedia
Café marron or Ramosmania rodriguesii is native to the island of Rodrigues
in the Indian Ocean
.
In 2003 the café marron bore its first fruit with viable seeds. Slow but steady efforts have been made to grow more café marron trees and speed up the pollination process. Ramosmania rodriguesii is a Critically endangered
plant species.
Rodrigues (island)
Rodrigues , sometimes spelled Rodriguez but named after the Portuguese explorer Diogo Rodrigues, is the smallest of the Mascarene Islands and a dependency of Mauritius...
in the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
.
History
It was thought Ramosmania rodriguesii was extinct until a single surviving tree was spotted by a schoolboy in 1980, who was shown a drawing of the plant by his teacher. The only image of the plant was made in 1877, by a European visitor, passing through Rodrigues. By the 1950s, it was presumed to be extinct. Cuttings were taken to Kew Gardens, and although the plant regularly flowers, it never produced seed until horticulturists discovered how to pollinate the flowers.In 2003 the café marron bore its first fruit with viable seeds. Slow but steady efforts have been made to grow more café marron trees and speed up the pollination process. Ramosmania rodriguesii is a Critically endangered
Critically endangered
Version 2010.3 of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species identified 3744 Critically Endangered species, subspecies and varieties, stocks and subpopulations.Critically Endangered by kingdom:*1993 Animalia*2 Fungi*1745 Plantae*4 Protista-References:...
plant species.