A tropical cactus once found in the Florida Keys no longer exists in the United States, except for a few conservation collections, a field biologist told Fox News Digital this week.
Jennifer Possley, who described the extinction of the Key Largo tree cactus in a paper published earlier this month in the Journal of the Texas Botanical Research Institute, said sea levels in the region Rise and other factors contributed to the extinction of the Key Largo tree cactus.
Posley is the regional conservation director at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in Coral Gables, Florida. She is part of a group of scientists and researchers who have been studying the species together since it was first discovered in 1992 at John Pennekamp Coral State Park.
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“It sounds crazy in some ways,” Posley told Fox News Digital, considering the Key Largo tree cactus is two stories tall and as wide as several cars.
“But it’s in a super isolated area, in some tall mangroves,” she said. “So no one in their right mind would walk through it.”
The Key Largo cactus tree that has been seen here for years, since its discovery in 1992, is no longer present in the United States, according to a field biologist. (Susan Coltman; Trudy Wilson/Florida Parks Service; Susan Coltman)
No one knows for sure how long the Key Largo tree cactus has been there, but Posley said it could be decades, “probably has been there for 100 years.”
The Florida Keys are home to at least eight species of cacti, and rising sea levels pose a known threat to many rare plant groups there, the paper said.
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In 2007, when Fairchild Tropical Gardens helped monitor cactus populations at state parks in Florida, the Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) “performed brilliantly,” Possley said. “And it’s been doing very well these past few years.”
Apparently, “something is eating the cactus.”
By 2012, things “started to go downhill a little bit, but nothing to worry about yet,” Posley said.
By 2015, however, it became clear to Posley and others that “something was eating the cactus.”
The Key Largo tree cactus is two stories tall and as wide as several cars, said field biologist Jennifer Possley in the illustration. (Susan Kottman)
“My eyes are bulging because [there were] The severe marks and damage resulted in the death of many plants,” she said.
Bosley said that while the cacti should have recovered, their numbers continue to decline — the result of some major hurricanes and “king tides.”
By 2019, “there was actually salt water eating away at the roots of the plants, which we had never seen before,” Posley said.
In July 2023, it became apparent that the Key Largo tree cactus would not survive, Posley said.
“Other cacti in the area…are threatened with a similar fate.”
“Its decline and subsequent extinction corresponded with rising sea levels in the region,” the paper said.
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“Other cacti in the region, as well as all rare plants in the Florida Keys, are threatened with a similar fate.”
But Posley clarified that it would be unfair to blame rising sea levels alone.
A park ranger in Florida stands next to some damaged Key Largo tree cacti, which can grow up to two stories tall, as shown in the photo at right. (James Lange/Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens; Susan Koltman)
“We do think the cactus is disappearing because of a combination of events, including rising sea levels,” she said.
“Herbivores are definitely a part of it. Passing hurricanes are definitely a contributor as well.”
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Posley said the Key Largo tree cactus “probably won’t be the first species we lose to rising sea levels.”
She said “quite a number of plant species” on the islands were “seriously threatened”.
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“This is a really cool species that we can consider part of South Florida’s botanical heritage,” she said. “Then it disappeared.”
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Although the Key Largo tree cactus has disappeared from the U.S. ecosystem, it is not technically extinct.
Posley noted that it lives in coastal areas of Cuba and the Bahamas, as well as in conservation collections like the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden.
