快猫短视频

This bizarre-shaped plant from a Malaysian rainforest appears to be so vanishingly rare it should already be considered critically endangered. Described this week by a UK and Malaysian team, it was first found near a mountain trail in 2019 by Nikong Dome, who lives alongside Indigenous communities in the rainforests of Terengganu state.

鈥淭his was a completely unexpected and astonishing discovery. It鈥檚 only a couple of centimetres high, orange, a beautiful-looking thing,鈥� says Chris Thorogood at the University of Oxford. Named Thismia sitimeriamiae, the species belongs to a mysterious group of plants called fairy lanterns. Around 25 new species of the group have been discovered in the past five years, from Asia to the US.

The new species has no leaves or chlorophyll, instead taking food from nearby fungi. The evolutionary reason for the plant鈥檚 strange geometry could be linked to its reproductive strategy, Thorogood speculates, with fungus gnats pollinating the species after mistaking it for a fungus.

Thismia sitimeriamiae remains elusive in the wild. It only flowers briefly before withering, and the original plant鈥檚 home was later found destroyed by wild boars, with only a single specimen discovered each time on two subsequent visits to the area.