On a beach visited by thousands of Zanzibaris and tourists each year, a tree had been hiding in plain sight. Scientists on a December 2024 botanical expedition to Pemba Island stumbled upon a flowering mahogany growing along a 200-meter stretch of the Tondooni Peninsula — and later confirmed it was entirely new to science. But with fewer than 30 trees remaining in the wild, conservationists are now racing to save the species before it's lost.
The tree, named Afzelia corallina after the ancient fossilized coral beds where it grows, produces sweet-smelling crimson, white, and pink flowers that resemble the coral of its namesake. Researchers from the Ngezi-Vumawimbi Forest Reserve initially thought they had found a rare Intsia bijuga, but closer examination revealed an Afzelia — a genus of mahogany prized for its attractive timber. That very quality may explain why so few survived on Pemba, just 50 kilometers from mainland Tanzania.
"It's an extraordinary finding that none of us expected," said Silvia Ceppi of Istituto Oikos, the conservation nonprofit working to protect the species. What makes the discovery all the more striking is its location: a public beach, surrounded by development, yet botanists had overlooked the trees until the expedition.
The urgency is real. A follow-up visit in January found that poachers had already felled one of the surviving trees, and two others were toppled by storms. The team discovered very few seeds — most new growth appeared to come from root shoots rather than natural regeneration. But there is reason for cautious optimism. The seeds they did collect germinate easily and show a 90% survival rate, according to tropical botanist Andrea Bianchi, co-author of the study describing the species.
Bianchi and his colleagues are now appealing to owners of private lodges north of the trees' range to consider planting A. corallina seedlings in their gardens, where they'd be sheltered from timber poachers. "Then we could carefully plant seedlings from different mother trees," he said, "to maximize genetic variability." Istituto Oikos has also applied for emergency funding to combat a spike in commercial poaching and plans to sift through leaf litter beneath the surviving trees for any additional seeds that could be raised in a nursery.
"It's a last-minute situation, because there are only 27 trees left," Ceppi said.
But if the effort succeeds, A. corallina could eventually be reintroduced to its native habitat — and those coral-like blooms, once nearly lost, might someday line the very beach where they were found hiding all along.