5 Endangered Trees with Amazing Stories

Chile's national tree is a spiky-leaved evergreen conifer that grows in the Andes and, thanks to its high salt tolerance, along the coast of south-central Chile, as well as in western Argentina. (Fossils from the Jurassic period show that plants very similar to the monkey puzzle have been growing for around 200 million years, according to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.)

The tree holds deep spiritual significance for Indigenous Araucanos communities, who traditionally roasted and mashed its seeds and grind the dried seeds into flour for a fermented drink called muday. Illegal logging and forest fires now threaten the species in the wild, and BGCI adds deforestation, grazing, seed collection, and the spread of exotic tree plantations to the list. The IUCN upgraded the monkey puzzle to endangered in 2013.

Magnolias are of exceptional interest to evolutionary biologists because their flower parts are arranged in spirals rather than rings, unlike most other flowering plants. Strikingly similar species grow thousands of miles apart, which researchers link to ancient plant migrations across the North Atlantic land bridge and the Bering Strait. Magnolia officinalis is also a widely known ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine.

The family includes about 245 described taxa, and of the 151 assessed, 31 are critically endangered and 58 are endangered. Sara Oldfield, then chair of the IUCN/SSC Global Tree Specialist Group, wrote in the report's foreword that "magnolias act as attractive flagships for tree conservation worldwide." In Colombia, seven endangered and critically endangered magnolia species have helped designate five new Key Biodiversity Areas.

Native to Brazil's Atlantic Forest, pau brasil was first exploited for a dye extracted from its heartwood, which collectors known as brasileiros harvested beginning in 1501, BGCI reports. That trade cleared large areas of forest and led to the enslavement of local people. Demand from bow makers has continued, and the species is listed as endangered by the IUCN and on Brazil's official list of threatened plants. Locally, the bark and dye extract are used medicinally, and researchers are studying whether the bark could be used to treat cancer.

Serbian spruce was once widespread across Europe until the last ice age reduced it to a small refuge in the Balkans, and its drooping branches are an adaptation for shedding snow, according to the UK's Forest Research agency. Today the endangered tree is found only in Serbia and in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina near the Drina River, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's threatened conifers database notes. Fire has historically been the species' greatest threat, and it competes poorly with silver fir, beech, and Norway spruce, a decline researchers expect climate change to deepen.

Grandidier's baobabs line the road between Morondava and Belon'i Tsiribihina in western Madagascar's Menabe region. The endangered species is losing habitat to farmland, slash-and-burn agriculture, and cattle pasture, and its populations are aging as natural regeneration remains very low, according to a CITES proposal.

Bark harvesting adds pressure. A 2019 study in Madagascar Conservation & Development found that about 54 percent of Grandidier's baobabs surveyed in Menabe had been stripped of bark for rope and straps, and estimated that roughly 9,800 trees were debarked over ten months. If demand holds, the authors project, every baobab in Menabe could be debarked within 39 years.