Actors: Five PCA members (interested in plant conservation) plus two friends.

Narrator: “Seven wet, dirty and scratched people are struggling up a steep ravine. None of them have been in this place before. The way is difficult, with many boulders and deep holes. One of them stops for a minute to examine a tree. Let us listen to their conversation…”

PCA member No.1: “This tree is different. Um…hey, wait a minute! This is a tree that’s only supposed to be on Silhouette!”

PCA member No.2: “What? Are you sure? Let me have a look. Um…I don’t think I know this species well enough to tell. I’ve only been to Silhouette once. Surely it can’t be. What do you think, Bruno?”

PCA member No. 3: “Let me see. Yes it does look like it, but let me get a closer look. The leaves and structure are very similar to the trees I’ve seen on Silhouette. It must be…Well, this is a nice surprise but we need to check to be sure.” (No. 3 takes a few leaves for later checking.)

PCA member No. 2: “Hey, you ahead, we’ve made a VERY interesting discovery – a tree that’s found only on Silhouette and was first discovered there in the mid-1980s, and now we know it’s growing on Mahe as well! I guess we have to check properly first, but…wow, this is fantastic!”

Narrator: “What special plant had they found? How did the story end?”

Well, to cut a long story short, seven people came out of the forest near the summit of Morne Blanc, having discovered a tree known as Bwa Mapoudgranbwa. Its scientific name is Pisonia sechellarum.
It was first discovered high in the mountains of Silhouette and was described in 1986 by the French botanist Francis Friedmann, who found a very small forest of these trees on the island, along with many other rare plants.

The mountain Bwa Mapou is an endemic relative of the lowland/coastal Bwa Mapou, which grows on small islands such as Aride and Cousine, where noddy terns use the large, soft leaves as nesting material.

We did confirm the identification of the tree we found. It is definitely Bwa Mapoudgranbwa, but we would need flowers or fruits to know for sure whether it is a new sub-species or a variety. However, a really interesting piece of information, which we had not realised at the time, is that another botanist had actually discovered a species of Bwa Mapou near the summit of Morne Blanc in 1874!

John Horne’s specimen only had leaf buds though, and he was unsure of the species. But Friedmann suggests in his book Flores des Seychelles – Dicotylédones that Horne’s specimen was probably the same species as on Silhouette.

Is this the only tree left on Mahe? Can it be saved? Should it be propagated? Our PCA members will work with others to try to decide the best way of conserving this species on Mahe.

At the moment this tree is recorded, and the specimen we collected will go into the National Herbarium – a very important and valuable collection of pressed plant specimens kept at the Natural History Museum in Victoria.

A herbarium forms a record of past plant collections by botanists, but it should also be an expanding and evolving collection, forming the basis for active research and education. This will hopefully start early in 2011, and communities will be asked to take part. We hope you will join us.

● The Plant Conservation Action group (PCA) organises field trips into interesting areas of vegetation around Mahe (mainly) for members and friends of this NGO every two months or so. People interested in plant conservation are welcome to join many of these trips. Contact kbeaver@seychelles.net or telephone 241104.