During a research mission to Damsak Island in the Farasan Archipelago (a group of Saudi islands located in the Red Sea off the southwestern coast of Saudi Arabia), a research team from Umm Al-Qura and King Khalid Universities in Saudi Arabia were met with a research surprise: the discovery for the first time of the "heart-leaved indigo" plant, a discovery documented in a study published in the Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity.
"Heart-leaved indigo" is a small annual herbaceous plant belonging to the indigo genus of the legume family, the same family that includes many species known for producing a natural blue dye. It is characterized by its low growth, as it spreads close to the ground surface, and its leaves are small, round, and heart-shaped, hence the name "heart-leaved".
In some dry areas, this plant forms part of the vegetation cover grazed by animals, especially after the rainy seasons. As a legume, it helps fix nitrogen in the soil through bacteria in its roots, and improves the fertility of relatively poor soils.
Available scientific records indicate that the presence of this plant in the Arabian Peninsula was limited to the Sultanate of Oman only, which raises many questions, most notably whether the current discovery of the plant on the island of Damsak in Saudi Arabia is a recent appearance of the plant, or whether it has been there for a long time and no one noticed it.
How did he get to "Damascus"?
Dr. Samah Al-Harbi from the Department of Biology at the College of Applied Sciences at Umm Al-Qura University, and the lead researcher in the study, told Al Jazeera Net: “I believe that the plant may have already existed but was not discovered previously, because it is a very small annual plant and its appearance is limited to a very short period.”
The plant grows for a short time after the rains, then dries up and dies quickly. When the researchers found it, most of the plants had reached the end of their life cycle and had dried out. Therefore, it is not unlikely that this short cycle was the reason for the failure of previous plant surveys to find it. Moreover, the number of plants on Damsak Island was very small, and its presence on a remote island increases the likelihood that it was missed by the surveys.
Although the researcher favors this scenario, she does not rule out the possibility that the plant may have recently arrived on the island from Oman, Yemen, or Africa, through natural means of dispersal, such as wind, birds, or other methods of seed transport.
She says: "The genetic fingerprinting technique used in the study was only able to confirm the identity of the plant, and could not determine when it arrived or where it came from. Answering these questions requires a broader study that compares that fingerprint with the DNA of plants found in these different regions to determine the degree of relatedness between them."
She says, “The discovery of the plant on Damsak Island indicates that the Farasan archipelago is not botanically isolated as it may seem, but rather represents a meeting point between the plants of Southwest Asia and East and Northeast Africa, where the Farasan archipelago appears as a natural bridge, located halfway between the two continents. Some of the plants found there have relatives in Oman or Yemen, while other types are found in Africa.
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