In the limestone hills of northern Vietnam, villagers have been busy planting one of the world’s rarest magnolias back into its natural habitat.

More than 1,100 seedlings from the Critically Endangered Magnolia grandis have been planted out by people from three villages in Ha Giang province, northern Vietnam. In a bid to save the species from extinction, seedlings were planted in community forests – areas of land protected by village regulations – and within plantations of cardamom.

By Lydia Murphy

The latest Red List to be published under the Global Tree Assessment shows that half of all Magnolia species are threatened with extinction in the wild. To find such a high proportion of threatened species in such a well-known and widely cultivated plant family is alarming, and signals the need for more concerted conservation action to protect these valuable trees.

The distribution of the Critically Endangered tree Magnolia longipedunculata, is only restricted to the Nankunshan Nature Reserve in South China. The species is threatened with extinction because of its small number of individuals and the impediments to its reproduction (a combination of protogyny, a short period of stigma receptivity, and the lack of efficient pollinators). To reduce the risk of extinction, Dr.

Everyone who knows about trees has heard of magnolias and it is hard to imagine that trees in this dramatic genus remain undiscovered. However, the discovery of two new magnolia species in one small area in Río Zuñac Reserve is a testament to the very special character of the very wet Cordillera Abitagua, semi-isolated granite mountains separating the main body of the Andes from the immense, flat Amazon basin.

(World Land Trust)

Three new species of magnolia have been discovered in Sierra Gorda thanks to Roberto Pedraza Ruiz, Technical Officer of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda (GESG) – and one of the new species has been named after him! GESG is the Mexican conservation partner of World Land Trust (WLT), which has been supporting conservation in Sierra Gorda since 2007.