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Tanzania – Erythrina variegata L.

Erythrina variegata (Indian coral tree), with its brilliant red flowers, is a beautiful sight in Tanzania. One of its relatives, Erythrina schliebenii Harms, was first described from southeastern Tanzania in 1935, and a large part of the original forest in which it grew was cleared for a cashew plantation in the 1940s. After repeated, unsuccessful attempts to relocate the plant, in 1998 it was listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.  In 2001, it was rediscovered about 70 miles north of where it was first known. It was collected again in 2011, and its identity was confirmed and published by Garden botanist Roy Gereau and colleagues from Tanzania and England. Lenin Festo, a Tanzanian botanist trained in a Garden program, raised living plants that now grow in the garden of the Tanzanian President’s official residence, helping to rescue this plant from likely extinction.

Learn more about the rediscovery of Erythrina schliebenii.