St. Helena is a tiny volcanic island off of the coast of southwestern Africa. This small island was completely uninhabited when it was discovered in 1502, but was covered in plants whose closest cousins were thousands of miles away. On this episode, I cover the St. Helena Olive, one of what was likely the rarest plants on earth before its disappearance in 2003.

Sources:

Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism (1600 - 1860) by Richard Grove

Icones Plantarum, Or Figures, With Brief Descriptive Characters and Remarks, Of New and Rare Plants Selected from the Kew Herbarium by Joseph Dalton Hooker (finished by his son, William Jackson Hooker)

https://sthelena.se/index/olive/

http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:717646-1#image-gallery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena

The radio announcement of the death of the St. Helena Olive: 

https://sainthelenaisland.info/endemics.htm

Information about the Millennium Forest Project: 

https://sainthelenaisland.info/millenniumforest.htm

Grove, R. (1993) Conserving Eden: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1017/S0010417500018399

Cronk (1989) The past and present vegetation of St Helena 

More information about George Benjamin: http://sthelenaonline.org/george-benjamin-the-man-who-saved-the-st-helena-ebony/

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/37598/67372241#text-fields