In April 2023, a group of Plantago plants with unusal leaf morphology was found on a cobblestone beach at 245–255 m altitude on an island in the Yangtze River in Jiang'an County, Yibin City, Sichuan Province. The species was identified as Plantago fengdouensis (Z.E. Chao & Yong Wang) Yong Wang & Z. Yu Li (Plantaginaceae), a National Class II Protected and Critically Endangered plant in China. This was the first record of P. fengdouensis in Sichuan.

Plantago fengdouensis is endemic to the Yangtze River Basin and was originally known only from three islands in the Yangtze River. In 2001, before the impoundment of the river to form the Three Gorges Reservoir, Wang Yong and Wu Jinqing of Wuhan Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, first discovered the species on the island of Fengwei Dam in the Yangtze River, Fengdu County, Chongqing, which is below the inundation line of the reservoir. In 2004, the type specimen was collected in Chongqing and preserved in the herbarium of Wuhan Botanical Garden (holotype HIB 0151258), and the species was named. But by 2006, there were less than 30 of the original 290 plants remaining. After the completion of the Three Gorges Dam Project in 2009, the wild habitat of the species was submerged, and the species was declared extinct in the wild. Plantago fengdouensis was considered the only herb that became extinct as a result of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. The Shenzhou XIII manned spacecraft carried seeds of the species for mutation breeding in November 2021, but the seeds returned from space had a low germination rate.

Plantago fengdouensis (Z.E. Chao & Yong Wang) Yong Wang & Z. Yu Li in Jiangan County. Photo: Xuyan Chen.

In January 2024, we discovered two previously unknown populations of P. fengdouensis, comprising a total of c. 100 individuals, on two islands 5 km apart in the Yangtze River, in Jiang'an County. Local authorities need to protect these two small populations, and further surveys are needed to locate any other wild populations.

We collected 400 seeds from the two islands and planted them in a greenhouse at Yibin University, for ex situ conservation. We have also collected DNA material from both populations, for genetic investigation, and we will perform propagation experiments to support potential reintroduction.

We thank the Natural Science Foundation of China (32001390) for their support.