The NomeShroles plant, considered an Iberian botanical jewel as it is a living fossil with more than 25 million years, has been rediscovered in the Sierra Norte de Sevilla after more than 40 years missing in Andalusia. This species was found in 1982 in the Sierra Sevillana and then was located on two slopes of Ponferrada (León) and Cadalso de los Vidrios (Madrid), but remains in critical danger of extinction for its few individuals and fleeting flowering.
“When I saw her, she knew she was her. Since 2001 every year I was looking for her, the first with more hope, the last almost giving it for loss. I found about 10 specimens at that time and then in other explorations to a hundred,” explained the Biologist Rosario Velasco, which after 24 fruitless years, found the plant on April 1 in the last of his searches, decade of the 80s and released the scientific world immediately.
There are very few living fossils in the globe (unknown close relatives, except for fossilized) and the nome surrounds is one of them. As soon as a plot of height, it belongs to the lineage of the nomemplres. The plant has survived all kinds of historical climatic changes and has varied little its appearance with the passage of time, expert botanical biologists stand out. Scientists have this plant in a pedestal and that is why it is one of the first of which their full genome has been obtained. The plant has a characteristic ring in the fruit and both the leaves and the flowers and their fruits are confronted, something very unusual in this huge family of the boraginaceae, with 150 genres. Germinates in sandy soils and its closest relative are the nomeol Myosotis).
“It is a spectacular living fossil, it should already be extinguished, but it has coincided with humans just at its most critical moment. For example, in Madrid it is not protected. In the world there are only between 500 and 1,500 copies that die naturally every year and has a minimum flowering, for a few months,” Pablo Vargas, research professor at the Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC) in the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. The NomeShroles Germina at the beginning of the year when the conditions are adequate and dies before the summer, but not before dispersing its seeds.
The Iberian Peninsula stands out, next to the Balkans, as the two regions with the most diverse flora in Europe, where many species are still described (about 200 new in recent years), but none as special as the NomeMés, experts underline.
In 1982 Benito Valdés, Professor Emeritus of Plant Biology and Ecology at the University of Seville, discovered the species for the first time in the Negrillo hill of Constantine, in the Sierra Norte Sevillana. The researcher announced in a German magazine the plant and called it with the scientific name Gyrocaryum Oppositifolium Valdés. “A non -insightful observer would confuse it, but when the experts explore the territory, things always collide. This time it shocked me that it looked like Omphalodes and Miosotys (Nomeribidos), I studied it and I saw that it was a new genre, with very differential characteristics, ”explains Valdés, 83.“ The populations are very dynamic and depend on the temperature and rainfall cycle. The seeds are in the floor seed bank and do not germinate. So far, ”he adds happy after the recent finding in the same holm oak forest, cork oaks and complaints of his first Eureka.
Discarded a genetic problem by studies in Madrid, regardless of climate change, the worst enemy for the survival of this plant is usually goats, so experts have protected some of them with cages in the Community of Madrid. Although Valdés and Velasco blame germination in the Sierra Sevillana to the copious rains – the province of Seville has broken its historical record this March -, Vargas does not support this hypothesis, because in cultivation conditions it does not require torrential rains. In fact, there have been abundant rainfall this year in León and Madrid and their populations continue to have similar number of individuals, the expert points out.
“If next year it maintains a normal rainfall, after so many years of drought, I hope we see it again, although perhaps not with so many individuals. We will already do our proper monitoring,” says Velasco, which belongs to the Andalusian Network of Botanical and Mycological Gardens.
Vargas, who has studied this plant the last two decades with eight other experts in Madrid, León and Seville, proposes a searches in the field and reintroductions. Specifically, the government should declare it “in a critical situation” to achieve sufficient funds from the administrations.
The NomeShore appears in the Andalusian catalog of threatened Flora and in Castellanoleon, but is not protected in the Community of Madrid, whose catalog has not been updated since 1992, Critica Vargas. The Junta de Andalucía seeks to obtain these days seeds from the populations found, in order to preserve them in the Andalusian vegetable germplasm bank, in the face of future actions, as reported by the Andalusian Ministry of Sustainability and Environment.
The union for the conservation of nature (IUCN) included it in 2006 in its list of critical endangered species. It remains to be seen if the survival of this national heritage jewel will last, although experts are not optimistic. If overwhelming measures are not taken, it is very possible that the NomeShurns extinguish this 21st century due to the competition of other plant species and grazing, lethal for the small colonies that have still survived for 25 million years.
