Name: Great big stroy : This is the World's Loneliest Tree (これが世界で最も孤独な木) (Great big stroy : This is the World's Loneliest Tree)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:01:49.000Z
Duration: 2 min 53 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

程度の副詞

This is a story of a plant, but not just any plant.

It is the story of a plant that long, long ago once ruled the world.

A plant that, today, is the very last of its kind.

It's this plant, behind me, Encephalartos woodii.

and I've been looking after it for over 20 years.

It was named for British botanist, John Medley Wood, who in 1895 discovered it growing on a hillside on the coast of South Africa.

A strange, handsome plant caught his eye, and he carefully removed a small portion of it,

and had it shipped all the way to London, to here, Kew Gardens, where it's been for the last 117 years.

But its history goes much, much further back.

You see, Encephalartos woodii, is what is known as a cycad,

and cycads have been around for 300 million years.

As the millennium rolled on, cycads flourished, providing shade for triceratops, a perch for pterodactyls, and a tasty snack for brontosauruses.

At one point during the Jurassic, cycads made up 20% of all the plants on Earth, and covered every corner of the globe.

But the good times couldn't last forever.

New modern plants, like conifers and fruit trees started pushing cycads out.

And the once proud population of E. Woodiis were reduced, and reduced, and reduced

One single solitary E. Woodii growing quietly on the hillside,

which brings us right back to John Medley Wood.

At the time, he had no way of knowing just how rare his discovery was;

but expedition after expedition in search of more E. Woodii have proved fruitless.

You see, cycads are dioecious, meaning, you need separate male and female plants to create a new one,

and this one happens to be a male, a true lonely bachelor.

If a female mate cannot be found, it really will be the last of its kind.

To this day, researchers are still looking.

After all, it's a big world, there might just be a chance.

In the meantime, it'll have me to keep him company.