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Armed with new technology, botanists are proposing what was once thought impossible: reviving long-lost plant species by using seeds from dried specimens in collections. The challenges remain daunting, but researchers are now searching for the best de-extinction candidates.
ABOVE: An image of
Astragalus nitidiflorus submitted to the citizen science platform iNaturalist that has yet to be verified by taxonomists. The species was officially recorded as extinct but was recently rediscovered.
Around four decades ago, the late botanist Walter Scott tramped up a hillside that was destined to be quarried and plucked a few yellow flowers from the rocky slope. He took the plants home and, in an effort to save them from extinction, raised them in well-drained wooden trays. Scott’s foresight to preserve
Hieracium hethlandiae (F. Hanb.) Pugsley
, a hawkweed whose stellar flowers might be mistaken for dandelions by the untrained eye, went apparently unnoticed by the broader botany community.