The White-winged Stone-Parsley, described in 1919, is a small herb with white flowers and is known from only two regions, the hills of Chotanagpur on the Neterahat Plateau in the Ranchi District, Jharkhand as well as from the Raigarh District in Chhattisgarh, both in north-eastern India.
The species was last recorded in 1940 and is now considered to be very likely extinct.
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syn. Ligusticum alboalatum Haines
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Photo from: ‘H. H. Haines: Some new species of plants from Behar and Orissa. Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. New Series 15: 309-318. 1919
(public domain)
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References:
[1] Sharad Singh Negi: Biodiversity and its conservation in India. South Asia Books 1993
This species is only poorly known, only two or three herbarium specimens that were collected in Sikkim, India, where it was found at elevations of about 3500 m above sea level.
The species was last collected in 1849 and is now considered extinct.
The Naga Pimpernel is known only from the type material, that is said to have been collected in 1985 at the Naga Hills in Nagaland, India.
The species was apparently never recorded since and is thus considered most likely extinct, it is, however, almost always listed under its old synonym Pimpinella evoluta (C. B. Clarke) M. Hiroe. [1]
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References:
[1] Sharad Singh Negi: Biodiversity and its conservation in India. New Delhi: Indus Publishing 1993
The Hairy Carrot was endemic to sandstone hills of Ramnagar in the northern Champaran District of Bihar, India.
The species is known exclusively from the type specimen that had been collected in 1916, it was not recorded since that time and is most likely extinct today.
Spruce’s Niphogeton is endemic to Ecuador; it is only known from two collections, the first one collected sometime between 1857 to 1860 and the second one between 1826 to 1873.
The species has never been found since and is quite well extinct today.
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Photo: Field Museum of Natural History (F: Botany)
https://herbariovaa.org
The distribution of this species was limited to the coastal cliffs of the island of Alejandro Selkirk, then still called Más Afuera, in the Juan Fernández archipelago of Chile.
It was a kind of miniature version of a tree rarely more than 50 cm high, with a 10 to 20 cm high, about 1 cm thick trunk that was more or less covered by dead leaves. The leaves themselves were very narrow, almost ribbon-like, and were described as strongly succulent.
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The photo below is from 1920 and shows a plant that was sown in 1919 and bloomed just a year later.
Unfortunately, the specimen pictured died without producing any fertile seeds, otherwise the species might still exist today, even if only in cultivation.
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The last representatives of this species were found in 1991, two already badly battered specimens were all that was left over from the insatiable hunger of the introduced goats that were found all over the island. All later search expeditions were completely unsuccessful – the species is now extinct.
… macabre but true:
These goats, for their part, are widely regarded as a special breed (Juan Fernández goats) and are kept in zoos that specialize in keeping rare or even endangered breeds of domestic animals.
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References:
[1] C. Skottsberg: Notas sobre la vegetación de las Islas de Juan Fernández. Anales J. Bot. Madrid 11: 515-544. 1953 [2] Marcia Ricci: Conservation status and ex situ cultivation efforts of endemic flora of the Juan Fernández Archipelago. Biodivers Conserv 15:3111–3130. 2006 [3] Francis Hallé; Philippe Danton; Christophe Perrier: Architectures de plantes de l’Íle Robinson Crusoe, archipel Juan Fernández, Chili. Adansonia 29(2): 333-350. 2007
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Photo from: ‘The Natural history of Juan Fernandez and Easter Island, edited by Carl Skottsberg. Vol. 2., Botany. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri 1920-1953’
The Pulney Pimpernel, described in 1919, was restricted to the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu, India, the plant was formerly used by several of the native tribes as a medical plant to treat hemorrhoids (?).
The species was last recorded in 1891 and is now considered most likely extinct.
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References:
[1] Sharad Singh Negi: Biodiversity and its conservation in India. New Delhi: Indus Publishing 1993
