''Medemia argun'' is a rare species of the palm tree family (

Arecaceae The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees ...

) native to

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

and

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

. It is the only species in the genus ''Medemia''. The palm's dried dates have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs.

Description

''Medemia argun'' is a robust, solitary-stemmed,

dioecious Dioecy (; ; adj. dioecious , ) is a characteristic of a species, meaning that it has distinct individual organisms (unisexual) that produce male or female gametes, either directly (in animals) or indirectly (in seed plants). Dioecious reproductio ...

palm up to tall with fan leaves forming a dense rounded crown. It grows in extreme

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

conditions. It is typically found in dry river beds in which

ground water Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

is likely to occur.

Distribution

''Medemia argun'' is found only in

oases In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

inside of the

Nubian Desert The Nubian Desert ( ar, صحراء النوبة, ''Şaḩrā’ an Nūbyah'') is in the eastern region of the Sahara Desert, spanning approximately 400,000 km2 of northeastern Sudan and northern Eritrea, between the Nile and the Red Sea. Th ...

, in southern

and northern

. The global population is divided in several sub-populations, with the most important (>90%) part of the population occurring in northern Sudan. The global population of ''Medemia argun'' was estimated at about 7,400 individuals in the middle of the 2000s. In Egypt, only 32 individuals were counted at Dungul Oases in 2007 (Ibrahim and Baker 2009). Its area of occupancy is restricted to 880 km².

Conservation

The palm is an

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

vulnerable species, due to

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

and

artisanal mining An artisanal miner or small-scale miner (ASM) is a subsistence miner who is not officially employed by a mining company, but works independently, mining minerals using their own resources, usually by hand. Small-scale mining includes enterprises ...

. Currently, almost all the area where the palm occurs has been demarcated and leased by the government as concessions for national and foreign gold companies (Ali 2016, H. Ibrahim. pers. comm. 2017). Mining activities within the distribution of ''Medemia argun'' result in major landscape disturbance due to large scale excavations and tunneling. In addition, the mining companies seek ground water by drilling holes and digging exploration trenches, which cause both severe habitat degradation and destruction for the species. Moreover,

mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

and

cyanide Cyanide is a naturally occurring, rapidly acting, toxic chemical that can exist in many different forms. In chemistry, a cyanide () is a chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of ...

are used in gold mining, leading to the pollution of ground water. The palm is also threatened by climate change, which will likely stress existing populations and inhibit the recruitment of juveniles. In Egypt, the species occurs in Wadi Allaqi Biosphere Reserve. In 2003 an ex situ conservation experiment was led in University of Aswan, Egypt, where 21 seedlings had been transferred to the University desert garden. Some of them are now fruiting. ''Medemia argun'' has also been introduced to cultivation outside

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q121334, from2=Q5487394 Coryphoideae Desert fruits Flora of Egypt Flora of Sudan Flora of North Africa Monotypic Arecaceae genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Vulnerable flora of Africa Dioecious plants