World's rarest orchid found on remote Atlantic island
One of the world's rarest orchids has been discovered by British botanists on a volcanic island in the Atlantic Ocean.
Professor Richard Bateman and Dr. Paula Rudall, two experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, found the flower growing on a mountain in Portugal's Azores archipelago.
The rare orchid was found in Portugal's Azores archipelago.
After returning to Britain, the scientists discovered that another botanist had first seen the flower 175 years earlier.
Searching the library at Kew Gardens, the researchers learned that in 1838, a 20-year-old German explorer named Karl Hochstetter had found the plant while visiting the Azores, some 850 miles off the coast of Portugal.
After a thorough investigation, Bateman said: "Hochstetter didn't know he had discovered a rare flower. He gave it to his father, the renowned botanist Christian Ferdinand Hochstetter, who drew the flower in his book and concluded that it was merely a close relative of another orchid."
Bateman added: "This rare orchid has gone completely unrecognized all this time."
The British team plans to formally publish details of the flower so that the public can become aware of the need to conserve it, since any such flower can be valuable to sell.
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