First for rare plant on Norfolk Island

Native plant specialists at Norfolk Island Botanic Garden have successfully germinated the seed of one of the world’s rarest plants for the first time. 

Mountain Procris (Elatostema montanum), a small perennial herb in the nettle family, is unique to Norfolk Island. Due to pressures such as historical habitat loss, its numbers had dropped to fewer than 20 wild plants in 2008. 

To save the species from extinction, Norfolk Island National Park mounted a recovery effort, growing new plants from stem cuttings in the botanic garden’s native plant nursery. More than 100 Mountain Procris have now been successfully transplanted into suitable locations in the national park, and more are waiting to be planted out. 

With so few donor plants to draw on for stem cuttings, increasing the population has been a slow process, and Nursery Manager Mark Scott has been experimenting with other methods, including individual leaf cuttings and now growing from seed – a process that has not been without its challenges. 

Mountain Procris produces male and female flowers on separate plants, and when those plants are few in number and far apart, pollination is difficult. If it does take place successfully, the pods disperse their tiny seeds through an explosive mechanism, making seed collection difficult. 

Now that Mark has successfully grown plants from cuttings, there are both ‘male’ and ‘female’ plants growing close together in the nursery. This has enabled successful pollination and more recently, collection and germination of seeds from the nursery-grown plants for the first time, representing a potential boost to the number of new Procris available for transplantation. 

Norfolk Island is a priority place under the Australian Government’s Threatened Species Action Plan 2022-2032. 

Mountain Procris conservation is supported by the Saving Native Species program.