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Botanical Garden scientist rediscovers mysterious parasitic plan
(by Kara Krekeler - May 14, 2008)
More than 20 years after it was first discovered, a rare plant has once again been found by a Missouri Botanical Garden scientist.
Curator of the Garden’s Science and Conservation Division, George Yatskievych rediscovered the parasitic flowering plant during a trip to the Sierra Madre del Sur region of western Mexico in June 2006. Yatskievych made the trip specifically to find the plant, which had not been seen since 1985 when New York Botanical Garden scientist Wayt Thomas first stumbled across it while collecting other plants.
“I’ve always been interested in plants that don’t fit the preconceived notion of what plants should be,” Yatskievych said. “The specimen collected by Dr. Thomas was so unusual that I had to see for myself what it looked like alive.”
During the 20 years between discoveries, a dried and pressed sample of the plant — which is orange-brown and fleshy-stemmed with a pinecone-shaped cluster of flowers — made its way through the botanical community, as even experts in parasitic plants were unable to fully classify the specimen.
When it reached Yatskievych, the botanist was able to classify it as a member of the Orobanchaceae family of parasitic plants, all of which survive on the roots of host plants and some of which have lost the ability to photosynthesize; the newly rediscovered plant fits both of those criteria. Yatskievych, who has performed taxonomic research on families of parasitic plants for the Flora of Missouri Project and Flora of North America, said that the Orobanchaceae he has worked with in the past “are almost otherworldly in appearance.”
Beyond the family designation, however, Yatskievych determined that the Mexican plant did not fit into any pre-existing genus and so must be on its own in that categorization. The new genus and species — which make up the scientific name of plants, animals and minerals — will be officially identified later this year when Yatskievych’s findings are published in a scientific journal.
Yatskievych was able to gather more information about the ecology surrounding the new genus, as well as the identity of its host plant, a flowering tree known by the scientific name Hedyosmum mexicanum, during a second research trip in 2007. At that time, he was also able to determine that the parasitic plant is rare and imperiled in nature.
“The region where the plant grows is changing rapidly, as the abundant forests gradually are being logged for timber and the slopes burned to become pastures and crop fields,” Yatskievych said. “In another decade or two, we might never have succeeded in relocating this undescribed genus in the field.”
The 2007 trip also yielded a number of other plant and animal species discoveries, including an unknown caterpillar that Mexican researchers hope to study further.
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