Morne Seychellois

Morne Seychellois National Park was established in 1979 on the island of Mahé, the main island of Seychelles, and protects some 30 km², around a fifth of the island's surface. It is the largest protected area in the country.

Its core is the massif of the same name, which culminates at about 905 metres and is the highest point in the archipelago. Seychelles is a rare case among oceanic islands: its islands are neither volcanic nor coral in origin, but fragments of continental granite broken off from Gondwana more than sixty million years ago, and that ancient origin explains a relict flora with a very high degree of endemism.

The park preserves montane forest, summit cloud forest and formations on bare rock, with palms, pandanus and endemic carnivorous plants. Its most notable species is the jellyfish tree, Medusagyne oppositifolia, the sole representative of its family, which was thought extinct for almost a century until its rediscovery in the 1970s on the slopes of Mahé, where a few dozen adult trees survive, struggling to regenerate naturally. The park is also home to the paradise flycatcher and several endemic frogs of very ancient lineages.