Here, an orchid stretches its unique blooms for the sunlight. This flower isn’t just special because of its looks: it’s also a newly discovered species of orchid.
Orchids are found all over the world and even grow in Antarctica. About 25,000 different species are known to date. However, like many other plant species, several orchid species are threatened with extinction due to climate change and human activities. Above all, drought affects the pretty plants.
All the better that Monika Lipińska and her colleagues from the University of Gdańsk in Poland can now confirm the discovery of a new species of orchid. Photographer Alex Portilla first discovered the orchid in the rainforest of northern Ecuador. He cultivated the flower, which he initially thought to be a representative of an already known species, in the greenhouses of his orchid breeding company.
Around the same time, the Polish orchidologists around Lipińska came across the orchid species during field trips in Ecuador and suspected that it could be an undescribed species. They therefore teamed up with Alex Potilla to conduct morphological and phylogenetic analyzes of the plant.
In fact, their study confirmed that this orchid is a previously unknown species. Scientists honored the original discoverer of this amazing plant by naming it after his daughter Ana Catalina Portilla Schröder: Maxillaria anacatalina-portillae. However, the species, which only occurs in a small area in the Ecuadorian province of Carchi, is highly endangered, as the researchers confess. Because their habitat has already been affected by climate change and human intervention.