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A peculiar plant has been found in the rainforests of Borneo after having been lost for over 150 years.

Thismia neptunis was discovered in 1866 by the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari in the Gunung Matang massif in western Sarawak, Malaysia. He formally described it a few years later. There are no records of anyone seeing it since, so it was assumed extinct.

But in January 2017, of the Crop Research Institute in Olomouc, Czech Republic and his colleagues found a few specimens in the same area and photographed them for the first time.

T. neptunis belongs to a group of plants that shun the light. Instead they live underground and steal food from fungi. This behaviour has evolved independently about 40 times.

Subterranean plant

There are around 500 species of 鈥渦nderground plant鈥�, says of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, who studies these 鈥溾��. They have lost their leaves and chlorophyll, and cannot photosynthesize like normal green plants. 鈥淭hey completely rely on fungi,鈥� Merckx says.

The fungi in question are called mycorrhiza. They have symbiotic relationships with plants, helping them get water and nutrients in exchange for food. So mycoheterotrophs like T. neptunis ultimately get their food from other plants.

It鈥檚 assumed the fungi the mycoheterotrophs take food from don鈥檛 benefit, meaning the plants are parasites, says Merckx. However, no one has demonstrated this.

Most parasitic plants steal food from other plants and live above ground, so they are easy to spot. The semi-parasitic mistletoe is an example. By contrast, mycoheterotrophs are elusive: they only appear above ground when they flower, a few weeks a year. 鈥淎nd they may not flower every year,鈥� Merckx says.

Many species of mycoheterotrophs are known only from one site, so they are assumed to be rare and endangered. But it may just be that no one is looking. While doing fieldwork in Australia, Merckx was surprised to find that some species are quite widespread. 鈥淭hey are much more common than people think.鈥�