A new orchid species – a delicate cousin of a known orchid – has been identified in Japan.
Japan’s flora has been exhaustively studied, and so botanists were under the impression that the mainland is home to just one species from the Spiranthes genus of orchids: Spiranthes australis. But in May 2015, at Kobe University in Japan stumbled upon an unusual type of orchid while on a field trip exploring the grasslands of the Chiba prefecture.
Suetsugu spotted a cluster of rosy petals that looked unique. “I was immediately drawn to its intricate and delicate design,” he says.
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After taking flower samples back to the laboratory for dissection, he confirmed his initial suspicion – there was something in this flower’s morphology setting it apart from the Spiranthes he had long known. The orchid was hairless, while the common Spiranthes is known for its hairy stem.
To find out if the orchid was indeed a new discovery, Suetsugu’s team compared 28 plants of this orchid with 27 specimens from five other known types of Spiranthes from Japan, Taiwan and Laos. The researchers also spent years studying the orchid’s ecology, morphology, reproductive biology and DNA. They were able to confirm that the Spiranthes they were looking at wasn’t previously known and named the newfound species Spiranthes hachijoensis.
This orchid blooms a month before the better-known S. australis. Its flowers are small and white or pinkish to purple, spiralling around its central stalk, but they open more weakly and with less curvature than would be expected. “If I were to describe it with a metaphor, I would say it’s like a delicate butterfly frozen in time, capturing all its beauty in one moment,” says Suetsugu, who thinks it resembles a work of blown glass.
You can stumble upon S. hachijoensis even in private gardens and on balconies, says Suetsugu, reminding us of the need for keen exploration “even in seemingly unremarkable places”.
What’s more, the data suggests this new species was born fairly recently, demonstrating how dynamic Spiranthes can be as it generates new ecologically successful populations, says , at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest in Romania, who was not involved in the discovery. “Orchid research has always proved to be challenging, showing how much is still unknown and how many species are still waiting to be discovered and described,” she says.
Orchids are one of the most diverse plant families on the planet, with over 30,000 species found worldwide, and they play a crucial role in maintaining the planet’s biodiversity. Yet many orchid species are at risk of extinction because of climate change and habitat destruction. That makes the discovery of a new species like S. hachijoensis especially important, says at the University of the Azores in Portugal.
“If there are species that are not yet described, well, there’s obviously something missing and it might even disappear in the meantime, because nobody knows it’s there,” she says. “To properly have a conservation plan for something, you need to know what it is.”
