‘Lost’ fairy lantern spotted in Malaysian Borneo after 151 years

In 1866, the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari chanced upon a peculiar plant in the rainforests of western Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, where he had set up camp. He made detailed sketches of the tiny plant, and many years later, formally described it as Thismia neptunis. There have been no records of the species in the scientific literature ever since. But in January last year, a team of botanists spotted the plant again, 151 years after it was first recorded, in the same rainforest. The scientists also took what they believe are the first ever photographs of the species. “To our knowledge, it is only the second finding of the species in total,” Michal Sochor of the Crop Research Institute in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and his colleagues wrote in a recent paper published in Phytotaxa. “Its original description is restricted to external appearance and so is the original drawing, otherwise very detailed. We therefore provide its amended description, inclusive internal characters, and very first photographic documentation of this iconic and, due to its peculiar appearance and also the name, almost mythical plant.” Left: Beccari’s original illustration. Right: Marianne North’s painting based on the original illustration. Via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Thismia neptunis, flowering plants. Photographed by Michal Sochor and colleagues. Credit: Phytotaxa (2018). DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.340.1.5 Thismia neptunis is tiny, standing at just 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) when flowering. But the small size isn’t the only reason it’s easy to miss. The species belongs to a group of plants that spend most of their life underground. The only time the plants surface above ground…

from Conservation news https://ift.tt/2uKx1ZT
via IFTTT