What the island nation of Cape Verde cherishes as its own distinctive kind of date palm is getting an ancestry reveal.
The Cape Verde date palm (Phoenix atlantica), native to the island nation it’s nicknamed for, is one of three trees there that don’t grow in the wild anywhere else. The islands, scattered off western Africa’s big bulge, have six known species of native trees all together.
Now a new DNA and seed-shape analysis adds weight to the idea that the remote palms aren’t desert-island wildlings at all. Researchers analyzed DNA from various Cape Verde date palms including a precious bit of the original 1934 specimen that a roving