Scientists from Madagascar, the U.S. and Europe have described a new orchid species found up in the forest canopies of central Madagascar. The orchid, named Solenangis impraedicta, boasts a nectar spur that reaches 33 centimeters (13 inches) in length, making it the longest of any known plant relative to its flower size. (The flowers are just 2 cm, or three-quarters of an inch, long.) The nectar in this long spur is likely accessible only to long-tongued hawkmoths. As they sip the nectar, pollen from the flower is transferred onto their body, facilitating the pollination of the orchid species. The new species, described in a paper in Current Biology, represents the first orchid species with such extreme adaptations to hawkmoth pollination to be described since 1965. “Discovering a new orchid species is always an exciting event, but finding such amazing and charismatic species happens only once in a scientist’s career,” said Tariq Stévart, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Africa and Madagascar program. Close-up of the flowers of S. impraedicta. Image courtesy of Marie Savignac. The find is exciting to researchers because of its similarities to the so-called Darwin’s orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale), also endemic to Madagascar. After examining the long nectar spur of A. sesquipedale in 1862, Darwin speculated that it would take a moth with an exceptionally long proboscis to reach the nectar. His fellow pioneer in the theory of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, in 1867 narrowed down the prediction to a hawkmoth, and this theory was validated in 1903…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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