‘Miracle’ in miniature as rare new plant defies deforestation in Ecuador (2024)

“Very exciting here!” exclaims botanist John L. Clark in an Instagram video posted during the summer of 2022. He and his team have just spotted a tiny, new-to-science plant species in a rare patch of northwestern Ecuadorian forest.

This scene marks the finding of Amalophyllon miraculum, an undescribed plant barely 5 centimeters (2 inches) tall, found clinging to a large boulder in a forest fragment near the town of Santo Domingo. The find, researchers say, highlights the importance of preserving even small patches of threatened ecosystems.

Clark, a research botanist with Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Florida, and his team were driving outside Santo Domingo on the western slopes of the Andes when they spotted a rare tree and pulled over. The landowner came to see what the fuss was about and allowed them to explore the patch of forest on his land.

“We knew right away it was something unique,” Clark told Mongabay. Amalophyllon miraculum has distinctive features, including green leaves with purple undersides and minuscule white flowers. The new species just describedin the journalPhytoKeys.

The area where the plant was found, known as Centinela, was once a vast, lush tropical forest, but is now largely cleared for agriculture. Experts estimate that 70-97% of western Ecuador’s original forests have been destroyed since the mid-20th century. The remaining patches of Centinela forest are like islands of biodiversity amid a sea of farmland.

“When I mention howler monkeys, most people think of the Amazon, but you used to know you were getting away from Quito [the capital city] and close to Guayaquil [west of the Andes] because you could hear the monkeys howling,” Clark said. “It’s incredible how much that landscape has changed. Now you have wholesale deforestation.”

Currently, only two populations are known, both in small protected areas. This limited distribution has led to its preliminary assessment as Critically Endangered. The name Amalophyllon miraculum, Clark said, reflects the ‘miracle’ of finding the plant in these unexpected fragments of protected forests.

This finding also underscores the potential for new finds, even in altered landscapes. “A lot of the things that we thought were gone, they’re still there,” Clark said.

“Describing this species represents a relic of what still remains of the forest,” Andrea Fernandez, a study co-author from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE), told Mongabay. “It really tells a story of hope where the forests hold many things yet to be discovered even when they are so small.”

Although much of the deforestation in this part of Ecuador has been driven by agriculture, the history is closely tied to government policies. In the 1960s, Ecuador’s government deemed forested properties with no human occupants “unproductive” and open to land grabbers. Landowners were forced to clear at least half of their land to prove it was in use.

These agrarian laws led to a flurry of deforestation that lasted into the 1990s, leaving what experts estimate is less than 10% of all forests in northwestern Ecuador intact.

“The heroic efforts of local landowners who maintained small patches of forests, usually surrounding waterfalls, were instrumental in conserving these remnant forest fragments,” Clark said.

Conservation initiatives by organizations such as the Ecuador’s Jocotoco Foundation and PUCE’sPadre Julio Marrero Botanical Garden are working with local landowners to protect these areas and cultivate other rare species from the region in botanical collections.

“Every plant is worth saving. That plant may not be the cure for cancer, but it represents an ecosystem that brings a lot of benefits to the people who live there,” Clark said. “These ecosystems are refuges, not just for plants, but also for people.”

Banner image of Amalophyllon miraculum courtesy of John L. Clark

Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reportinghere.

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Citation:

Clark, J. L., Fernández, A., Zapata, J. N., Restrepo-Villarroel, C., White, D. M., & Pitman, N. C. A. (2024). Amalophyllon miraculum (Gesneriaceae), an exceptionally small lithophilous new species from the western Andean slopes of Ecuador. PhytoKeys, 242, 307-316. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.242.118069

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