New Plant Species Discovered! Facebook Sundew 'Drosera Magnifica'

New Plant Species Discovered! Facebook Sundew 'Drosera Magnifica'

Sundew Drosera Magnifica
Credit: Reginaldo Vasconcelos 2015[/caption]

Of all the strange places, a new species of plant has been discovered on Facebook. It should come as no surprise; botanists are everywhere.   PhD student Paulo Gonella was browsing Facebook, as he often does, when he stumbled upon a photo of some wild-growing plants shared by a friend and fellow plant enthusiast. His trained eyes saw what others had been missing: one of the plants in the photo was an undiscovered species!    "The plants in the photo looked much larger and had very distinctive leaf and flower characteristics when compared to all the other [sundews] I know," Paulo told Discover Magazine. "I immediately showed this photo to Fernando Rivadavia, who also studies this group of plants, and he was astonished as well."   The new species, Drosera Magnifica, is a carnivorous plant in the sundew family, native to southeastern Brazil. It is the largest species of sundew native to the Americas and the third largest overall.  Right now, it is considered critically endangered. Thanks to Facebook, it may have been saved from the brink of extinction!

← Previous Next →