A new species of giant tropical water lily has been described from Colombia. Named Victoria colombiana, The Colombian giant waterlily is the fourth species in the genus Victoria, and like its congeners it too has giant lily pads measuring up to two metres in diameter.
The new water lily has been described in the journal Phytotaxa, following a chance sighting on social media that culminated in a race against time to find the rare plant before it disappeared forever.
Kew Gardens tells the remarkable story of the giant water lily’s discovery and description below:
Carlos Magdalena, Botanical and Scientific Research Horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was first made aware of the waterlily on Instagram five years ago when he spotted it in photos taken in Colombia’s Inírida region by Jeremiah Harris.
Harris, who runs a carnivorous plant nursery in the US, was not aware at the time of the significance of his snapshot, mistakenly identifying the new species for the more common V. amazonica.
However, Magdalena, a world-renowned waterlily expert, immediately suspected something wasn’t quite right as the natural range of known Victoria waterlilies does not extend to the Inírida River, in Guainía, Colombia, which is in the head water drainage of the Orinoco River, South America’s third longest river and one of its most important waterways. This prompted him to speculate it could be a new species.
To confirm his suspicions, Magdalena scanned the Inírida and its many surrounding lakes using satellite imagery until he saw several Victoria pads from a single plant plainly visible in the satellite imagery, verifying that Victorias were indeed present there. Harris confirmed that the plants seen in the online maps where the same that were shown to him by the local guides
Magdalena then contacted Mauricio Bernal at the Jardín Botánico de Bogotá José Celestino Mutis in Bogotá, who also grows Victoria in the garden’s tropical displays and who has a history of collaboration with Kew.
Together they worked closely with Nilo Rodríguez, Jaime Hernández and Gustavo Melo, members of the indigenous reserves del río Atabapo; Caranacoa-Yurí-Laguna Morocoto and Puinave-Piapoco el Paujil, to organise a field trip to Inírida. Nilo Rodriguez described knowing about the waterlilies from their childhood but did not recall seeing many. After nearly two years of planning, an expedition to Inírida was ready.
From chance online sighting to chance rainforest encounter
Once the team was ready, they set off into Inírida’s rainforest on a five-day expedition, yet by the fifth day it seemed they would return empty handed. They initially located just two individuals of the waterlily, but the plants were not in flower.
This was problematic as a fertile herbarium voucher – a pressed and dried plant specimen that crucially requires a flower – is critical for botanists to distinguish the differences between species, by comparing them to other herbarium vouchers, such as the 6.4 million stored at Kew’s Herbarium. Furthermore, the plants they encountered appeared to be struggling with high-level waters and the late but intense rainy season.
Despite this, the team continued to travel along the Inírida and Guaviare rivers, hoping to find more specimens, but they failed. A breakthrough came on the eve of the team’s 9am return flight to Bogotá when at 11pm Magdalena explained their anguish to the expedition’s boatman Gustavo Melo from the indigenous Tucano community, famed for its navigational skills.
Astonishingly, Melo claimed to know exactly where to find more specimens of this waterlily.
With only 10 hours left to make their return flight, they set off at 1am in pitch-black darkness, heading in the opposite direction of the airport deeper and deeper into the flooded rainforest, trusting Melo’s skills and instinct to navigate through the tricky environment.
Just before sunrise, the team reached a small lake in the middle of the jungle where they located a second population with five additional individuals of V. colombiana, including one that was in flower.
The discovery provided the material needed to begin the formal scientific description of the species, with the team documenting a total of seven plants across two lakes before miraculously rushing back to the airport just in time for their flight.
Magdalena says: ‘This is one of those extraordinary stories where indigenous and horticultural knowledge with the help of social media and technology came together to uncover a truly extraordinary botanical achievement. It is also a reminder that nature is still full of surprises and wonder. Now that we know this waterlily exists, our responsibility is to understand it better and protect it. With so many plants in the wild threatened with extinction, we simply cannot wait any longer to take action.’
The herbarium specimens were deposited and mounted at the JBB Herbarium of the Jardín Botánico de Bogotá José Celestino Mutis, and the taxonomical work started with the help and supervision of Maarten Christenhusz, plant taxonomist, author and horticulture historian working in Wales for the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and a honorary research associate at RBG Kew.
Christenhusz says: ‘New species are found all the time, but few are as large, spectacular and emblematic as this one. This new giant waterlily can even be seen from space, which is a striking reminder of how much we still don’t know about life on our planet. We can only conserve what we know exists, and discoveries like this show why exploring and understanding the natural world is so important.’
Bernal adds: ‘It is wonderful to see how, even today, what is ordinary and commonplace to one person can be a hidden treasure to another. Dialogue and the collective construction of knowledge reveal their power and elegance in this case study. I am very proud to have been part of this discovery alongside my colleagues.’
The highs and lows of botanical research
Subsequent analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) done by Carlos A. Pedraza-Penalosa, from DreamGIS Colombia, revealed a third lake where the waterlily was present. Comparing satellite imagery suggested additional plants may become visible during the drier seasons when water levels drop. This, however, makes reaching the plants trickier as the terrain is easier to navigate by boat in the high season when the forests are flooded, than it is on foot.
At present, the team estimates there are between 30 and 50 individual V. colombiana plants in the wild, indicating the species is extremely rare and at threat of extinction. Searching for new unknown populations through more robust satellite imagery scanning to uncover the real number of individuals and natural populations is therefore essential, and the team are working towards an official IUCN Red List assessment of Critically Endangered.
There is hope however, as efforts are underway to support the long-term conservation of V. colombiana, including the possibility of establishing a naturalised population in a more accessible lake within Indigenous territory. Such a site could support local eco-tourism while providing an additional safeguarded population outside the species’ remote natural habitat.
Researchers hope to continue efforts to collect seed, with the aim of cultivating plants in Bogotá and learning more about the species under controlled conditions. If the efforts are successful, it may even be grown one day at Kew Gardens alongside its cousins: V. amazonica, V. cruziana and V. boliviana.
Image credits Carlos Magdalena, Kew.
More at https://www.kew.org/about-us/press-media/victoria-colombiana-giant-waterlily