Scientists uncover 56 new plants over one year
● Edinburgh’s Botanics at forefront of plant science
Scientists at Scotland’s leading botanical garden have formally identified 56 new plants in the last year including threatened species from around the globe.
The list of species described for the first time by experts at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) includes a mighty conifer, graceful gingers, warty begonias and microscopic algae.
The plants come from research in more than a dozen countries, including Argentina, Australia, China, Ethiopia, Korea, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Thailand, the US and Vietnam.
One newly described diatom – a single-cell algae – was found much closer to home, in Edinburgh.
Some of the plants have been kept in specialist research facilities in Scotland for years before being formally named.
The group comprises 15 species of lichens 14 gingers; eight types of begonia seven assorted trees three gesner – of the African violet family – one rhododendron, a liverwort, a fungus and six diatoms.
The total means the RBGE described more than one new plant species per week from April 2019 to March 2020, as part of a concentrated effort to catalogue life on Earth.
RBGE botanist Dr Mark Hughes, who specialises in tropical biodiversity, said: “Some of these were hiding in plain sight, like the five metre tall conifer Amentotaxus hekouensis, which was first collected in 2006 from Yunnan province in China, and then later discovered growing in northern Vietnam and Laos.
“One was hiding in plain mud, in Blackford Pond, Edinburgh, to be exact. The diatom Sellaphora pausariae was found in a harvest of a few handfuls of mud from the pond gathered in 2006, and has awaited the attention of our electron microscope and DNA lab ever since.
“With discoveries all over the world, we are delighted to find one in Edinburgh this year.”
Although elusive to the naked eye, the six diatoms discovered by RBGE last year in locations such as the seas around Texas and Korea are an essential part of the planet’s ecosystem.
They form part of the diverse marine diatom flora responsible for producing around 20 per cent of oxygen in the atmosphere – one in five of the breaths we take.
The RBGE’S Living Collection contains some of the world’s rarest plants, many of which arrive in Scotland unidentified and potentially new to science.
Its tropical rainforest research led to new “gems” in the darkness beneath the forest canopy.
Herbaceous begonias, gesners and gingers from the steamy forest floor included a begonia from Borneo, which has warty leaves like the skin of the Bornean earless monitor lizard which lives alongside.