Two woodland plants long thought extinct have reappeared in far northern Australia, experts announced recently.
Teucrium ajugaceum, a pink-flowered mint that lives in eucalypt woodlands, had not been seen since 1891 and was listed as extinct in 1992.
Rhaphidospora cavernarum, not seen since 1873, also frequents eucalypt forests. Though it grows to almost 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall and boasts white and purple flowers, the plant had somehow evaded surveyors until now.
The discoveries in Queensland's Cape York Peninsula were revealed in a Queensland Environmental Protection Agency (QEPA) report released earlier this month.
(See a photo of Cape York's tropical savanna.)
Ingenious Adaptation
T. ajugaceum was spotted near the town of Musgrave in 2004 by QEPA staff who were investigating the impacts of road construction.
Extracting gravel to build roads may represent the biggest threat to the plant's survival, said the agency's biodiversity planning officer Bruce Wannan.
"That's been an ongoing challenge [in road construction]—to try and avoid impacting species."
The rediscovered plant has an "ingenious adaption" for dealing with bushfires, Wannan added.
"It has a large underground tuber, to which it dies down each year at the start of the dry season," Wannan said.
"Then it resprouts at the beginning of each wet season. That seems to be a good mechanism for avoiding the worst impacts of fires."
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