The Cartagena rockrose: the greatest collective effort to save a Spanish plant

Abstract

The Cartagena rockrose has been chosen in 2024 as the threatened plant of the year in the annual SEBiCoP contest. It is probably the taxon of the Spanish flora that has reached the highest level of threat and protection, being the only plant declared in a critical situation by the Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico. It has gone through all kinds of situations. Abundant at the beginning of the 20th century, considered extinct decades later, the discovery of a single individual in the 1980s (almost 300 km from the original locality) and the recent detection in Cabrera of the largest known wild population to date. It has been threatened by self-incompatibility, hybridisation, mining and fires, but today it has better prospects for the future thanks to the collaboration of administrations, the scientific community and citizenship. This is probably the greatest Spanish effort to save a plant.