The Bistriţa Mountains (Munţii Bistriţei), in the Romanian Carpathians, hold a treasure. A rocky ridge barely two kilometers long shelters the extremely rare Andryala laevitomentosaa flowering plant of the Asteraceae family. If its golden yellow flowering recalls that of our ordinary dandelions, this modest plant hides its game well.
According to a study published in the Journal of Biogeography by botanists from Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) and relayed by our Italian colleagues from La Reppublica on December 15, the genetic age of the specimens of this species was estimated between 24,000 and 64,000 years old.
If flowering plants have two modes of reproduction, one called “sexual” (by pollination) and the other “asexual” (by natural cloning), the species in question seems to have chosen almost exclusively the second way and this, at least for several tens of millennia. Thus, the seeds analyzed by the researchers were mostly sterile.
Protected by a climatic “refuge”
This plant in fact practices “vegetative propagation”, that is to say that a fragment of root or rhizome (underground stem) is enough to generate an entire new specimen. The latter is then genetically identical to the one from which it came – apart from a few mutations. A way of perpetuating oneself for a long, very long period…
The specimens ofAndryala laevitomentosa “are among the oldest clones ever documented in angiosperms [plantes à fleurs, ndlr]“confided botanist Patrik Mráz, first author of the study. Such a “refuge” climatic, the thin rocky ridge would have allowed them to face formidable phases of glaciation, prolonged droughts and floods.
Now, the approximately 3,300 surviving specimens are divided into just five tiny plant populations, covering an area of just 45 square meters.
Threatened plant?
Due to lack of available data, the International Union for Conservation of Nature was unable to assess the conservation status of the species. Despite its robustness, we therefore do not know whether the plant is capable of surviving human-caused climate change, which is occurring at very high speed compared to past upheavals.
Among the longevity records of the plant kingdom, the oldest precisely dated marine plant on Earth is a 1,400-year-old clone living in the Baltic Sea. Using a less precise dating method, researchers who discovered the largest plant in the world in Australia estimated its age at around 4,500 years.
