In 2021, the project recorded its first evidence of natural seedling regeneration in the wild—a significant milestone demonstrating that the reintroduced plants were able to reproduce naturally and generate a new generation under wild conditions.

Although these first naturally recruited seedlings did not survive a later drought, their emergence represents an important step toward a self-sustaining population and highlights the value of the long-term restoration effort. Their loss also underscores an important remaining challenge. Water scarcity remains one of the biggest ongoing threats to this critically endangered plant. The full study has been published in Nature Conservation.

From a herbarium specimen to the lava fields

The project's origins can be traced back to a single herbarium specimen collected in 1962 near Caleta Tagus. For decades, it was the only evidence that the plant existed at all. Patricia Jaramillo Díaz, a senior researcher at the Charles Darwin Research Station, recalled returning to that cabinet again and again, asking the same question: Does this plant still exist?

That curiosity sparked a 1998 investigation of the remote, jagged lava fields of northern Isabela Island. The reality discovered there was dire. By 2007, the species had collapsed to just six surviving individuals, clinging to narrow cracks within the young volcanic flows of Darwin Volcano. This extreme vulnerability, a legacy of historical grazing by introduced herbivores, had left the species on the verge of extinction.