A wildflower believed to be extinct for 36 years has been rediscovered in western Ecuador

A rare wildflower that was thought to be extinct for 36 years was rediscovered in South America. As per the journal PhytoKeys, the wildflower Gasteranthus extinctus has only been spotted in Ecuador’s cloud forest and was last documented in 1985. The researchers thought it to have a dim future and named it “extinctus” because they believed it would soon die out, as per coauthor Dawson White, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Researchers decided to take another look in western Ecuador in 2021 to see if there were any patches of forest left and to search for the species that had lived there. Within days, the flower was found, White said.
“It was total elation because Gasteranthus extinctus is a symbol of these unique forests,” White said.

The team gathered samples to later confirm the DNA of the plant, which was scattered in clumps in the small sections of the remaining forest.

After the magnificent rediscovery, team member Riley Fortier checked the nature app iNaturalist to see if anyone else had taken a similar photo, White said. A joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, iNaturalist is a biodiversity observation network where people can post photos of plants, birds and other findings in nature for help with identification.

The researchers found photos of the wildflower posted in 2019 by a group of Ecuadorian students who had been enjoying an outing in a small conservation area.
“They were out on a trip a little north of where we were collecting and sure enough, they took two pictures of Gasteranthus extinctus, but they weren’t able to identify it as such,” White said.

He was able to track down the students to learn more details about their encounters and to include their observations in the scientific paper.

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