On a remote Pacific island made famous by Alexander Selkirk — the real-life castaway who inspired Robinson Crusoe — a lonely tree has become the focus of an urgent global rescue mission. Dendroseris neriifolia, a critically endangered tree daisy found nowhere else on Earth, has been reduced to a single surviving wild individual on Chile's Robinson Crusoe Island. But now, against all odds, this species has been given a fighting chance at survival.
Last month, seeds carefully collected from that last wild tree arrived at the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Wakehurst in Sussex. The journey marks the culmination of more than four decades of collaboration between botanists in Chile and the United Kingdom, and it may represent the most realistic opportunity yet to pull this species back from the brink of extinction.
X-ray analysis revealed that 25 of the 29 seeds sent to Kew are potentially viable — a finding that scientists have greeted with cautious optimism. Those precious seeds have been strategically divided between long-term conservation storage and propagation efforts. Seven seedlings are currently establishing, and three of them will soon make the journey to Logan Botanic Garden and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where horticulturists have a track record of cultivating plants from the Juan Fernández Islands.
"This is a significant moment in the ongoing conservation relationship between Logan — and the wider Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh — and key colleagues in the UK and in Chile," said Richard Baines, Curator of Logan Botanic Garden. "Experience has shown us that species from the Juan Fernández Islands feel particularly at home here at Logan, on the southwest tip of Scotland, bathed by the soft air of the Gulf Stream."
The challenges have been immense. By 1980, only seven wild individuals remained. Reintroduction efforts in the early 2000s failed after protective measures broke down in 2017, allowing invasive species to devastate the site. An ex-situ collection at Chile's National Botanical Garden collapsed due to mismatched climate conditions. Compounding the problem, roughly 90 percent of Dendroseris seeds are non-viable due to geographical isolation, and garden-grown specimens have hybridized, rendering their seeds useless for conservation.
Yet the Juan Fernández Islands — floating some 760 kilometers off Chile's coast — are worth fighting for. The archipelago supports an extraordinary concentration of endemic species: around 1.7 unique species per square kilometer, with 65 percent of its plant life found nowhere else on Earth. The Dendroseris genus itself is unique, the only group of plants in the world displaying the unusual "tree-daisy" form — daisy-like flowers crowning a woody, branching trunk.
Diego Penneckamp, a scientist at Jardín Botánico VerdeNativo who authored the definitive flora of the archipelago, put it plainly: "It is a race against time. This international collaboration to support the last remaining individual could prevent the extinction of a species that represents a unique lineage with its own natural history."
There is currently one young specimen growing at VerdeNativo botanic gardens, and with the seedlings now establishing in the UK, the pieces are finally aligning. The window remains narrow, but for the first time in years, the outlook for Dendroseris neriifolia holds something more than grief.