An incredible discovery, which was for years before their eyes, was made by botanists from Kew Gardens in London, since they measured what is the first species of giant water lily since the mid-nineteenth century.
The confusion was caused because for years, the experts believed that they were seeing a water lily known as Victoria Amazónica, in honor of Queen Victoria in 1852, but history slapped them, because it was a donation from South America.
The species found is a Giant Warlily, Bolivian victory, whose leaves grow up to three meters in nature, and is also the largest in the world. Some seeds that were donated by the Botanical Garden of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and the Gardens of La Rinconada in Bolivia.
Botanical artist Lucy Smith commented on the discovery:
Some people have asked, why does this one look so different from the others? But we’ve had to say, well, we think it’s similar to this or similar to that. So, in fact, we’ve had this wonderful secret hidden in plain sight all this time.
Carlos Magdalena, a research horticulturist who specializes in saving plant species from near extinction, commented that the plant is “one of the botanical wonders of the world”: “Some 2,000 new plant species are identified each year. What I think is very unusual is a plant size (this one) with this level of fame to be discovered in the year 2022. That’s pretty unusual. It also highlights how many things could exist. It really highlights how little we ultimately know about our natural world.”
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