CABBAGE TREE plants that helped to keep Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, alive on a desert island have been saved from extinction by British horticulturists.

Ten of the plants, Dendroseris litoralis, have been grown by Royal Botanic Garden scientists and this week one of them became the first to flower outside its natural habitat.

Just a handful of cabbage trees survive on Robinson Crusoe Island, the only place they exist in the wild, and their successful propagation and flowering marks a key step towards long-term survival.

Five years ago scientists at the Millennium Seed Bank at Royal Botanic Garden’s Wakehurst Place in Sussex were sent 2,000 seeds from the island to be stored for future conservation projects.

Staff took some of the seeds to propagate to learn more about the plant but until it flowered they were uncertain which variety of Dendroseris they had.

Dendroseris litoralis is the rarest of 12 varieties of the genus which all live on Robinson Crusoe Island, 400 miles off Chile’s Pacific coast, or its two smaller neighbours, Alexander Selkirk Island and Santa Clara Island.

Until recently just three cabbage trees survived on the island because of the destruction wrought by animals, mainly goats, introduced by a 16th century Spanish sailor.

Selkirk spent more than four years marooned on what was then known as Juan Fernándes Island, and his experiences prompted Daniel Defoe to write the classic novel Robinson Crusoe.

Selkirk was a privateer on a ship raiding Spanish merchant vessels in September 1704 when he demanded he be cast ashore after a series of rows with his captain. He took a gun, ammunition, his Bible and a few tools and spent the next 4½ years waiting and hoping for rescue, with a family of cats to keep him company and to chase away rats.

The 40sq mile island, rising 3,000ft, was populated by feral goats which he domesticated for meat, milk and hides, and had vegetables growing in abundance, including the cabbage tree, turnips, parsley, watercress and parsnips.

The coastline provided an ample supply of seals, shellfish and particularly lobsters, there was no shortage of fresh water and Selkirk was able to cook on fires started by rubbing two sticks.

When he was eventually rescued in February 1709 by a British privateer, the Duke, which spotted his signal fire, he signed on as Mate and spent a further two years on board before returning to England.

In 1713, the essayist Richard Steele published an account of Selkirk’s island life entitled, despite the sailor being Scottish, The Englishman. Defoe used this as the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719.

Roger Smith, head of the Millennium Seed Bank, said that no one at the Royal Botanical Gardens had tasted the cabbage tree but that staff were delighted to have provided a more secure future for a plant eaten by Selkirk.

“To have got it to flower is very important because it allows us to identify the species,” he said yesterday. “Until then we didn’t know which species we’d got. We can now sit down to think out what else we can do to protect the cabbage tree and decide whether there’s any possibility of reintroducing it to the island.”

He said that there was a certain irony in that Selkirk’s use of the cabbage tree leaves as a replacement for bread to keep himself alive contributed to the plant’s decline.

The cabbage tree looks similar to a palm and its orange flower, slightly bigger than a golf ball, would be pollinated in the wild by hummingbirds or would self-pollinate.

Chile changed the names of the Juan Fernández Islands to cash in on the tourist potential of the Robinson Crusoe tale.

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