The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Trochetiopsis ebenus
Also called St Helena ebony, Dwarf ebony, Ebony, Saint Helena Ebony
Melhania ebenus, the Saint Helena ebony, is a shrub or small tree endemic to Saint Helena, now critically endangered in the wild with only two known wild individuals. It is grown in island gardens and is easily propagated from cuttings.
Melhania ebenus, the dwarf ebony or Saint Helena ebony, is a species of flowering plant that is endemic to the island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It is a shrub or tree with staminodes that are dark maroon or "black". It is not related to the ebony of commerce (Diospyros spp.), but is instead a member of the mallow family, Malvaceae. Saint Helena ebony is now critically endangered in the wild, being reduced to two wild individuals on a cliff, but old roots are sometimes found washed out of eroding slopes (relicts of its former abundance). These are collected on the island and used for inlay work, an important craft on Saint Helena. A related species, Melhania melanoxylon, is now completely extinct.
It can be propagated from cuttings, and many island gardens now boast a fine ebony bush.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Melhania ebenus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
