Brandon, thanks for an educational and interesting post!

I think of Ginkgo's as probably being extinct in the wild but being well off in cultivation.

Also if I recall correctly there is only a valley or two worth of Metasequoias in China, but plenty in cultivation as well.

I now read the Ginkgo has naturalized at least partially in some locations!

Of the 3 trees you mentioned, certainly the Paarijat tree seems the most endangered. I hope people are taking better care of it than the article implies.

The last two have cool flowers. The flowers look similar to jasmine flowers, but I don't know if there is a relation.

Nearly in the same league, Abies beshanzuensis, 3 trees in the wild.

Resin

I'm surprised at the seeming lack of information and maybe even scientific interest in the Paarijat tree. I didn't even see any reference to a species name. The other two trees I listed above appear to have lots of effort being directed toward their reproduction and towards studying them. Apparently, the Paarijat tree is just a poorly treated tourist attraction.

Try searching with alternative spellings!

Seems (under the name Parijaat tree, but the same stats and claims) it is a specimen of Adansonia digitata. So of course, very far from the only one of its species.

Resin

How weird. The other day when I was googling the Paarijat tree, I immediately found the alternate spellings you mention. That wasn't the problem. But, I couldn't find any links, even with any of the alternate spellings, that contained the botanical name. Today, doing what I think is the same search, I find the botanical name in the first few search results with the name I used above. Twilight zone.....

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of people that think this is the only one of this particular tree. So, either there's a lot of mis-information out there about this tree, or there's more to it than we know. I'm beginning to lean towards there being lots of mis-information. That would explain the lack of scientific interest.

I'd go with the mis-information suggestion, too. There's an awful lot of it about on the internet!

Resin

What about this Hyophorbe Amaricaulis palm? There is only one of them left: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyophorbe_amaricaulis

~Xenia

P.S. And there's only two left in the wild of this tree (also on Mauritius): http://www.globaltrees.org/tp_bois_dentelle.htm

~Xenia

The St. Helena roundleaf gumwood had 1 last tree found in 1984 which was destroyed by storms in 1987 it was thought extinct until they found one growing out of a cliff ledge in 2006. they had to climb up and hand pollenate it and guide pollinating insects towards it and today about 5 saplings are growing in a lab.

Here is a link that might be useful: GardenWeb

That sounds like another good candidate. I googled it and came up with at least two other very similar stories, but all the references give quite different dates. It's amazing how data gets so screwed up. Awesome story even if the dates are uncertain.

thomas' link goes back to a gardenweb page. Can you repost it? I'd love to see the article.
marie

Unfortunately, the tropics probably have thousands of similar examples, most of these not generally known.