Think all new plant species are hiding in remote tropical rainforests? Think again! Professor SUETSUGU Kenji and his team have discovered a beautiful new orchid species right in Japan’s own backyard.

A new species of orchid has been discovered in Japan, a country known for its extensive study and documentation of flora. Led by Professor SUETSUGU Kenji and his team, the discovery of the Spiranthes hachijoensis orchid with its rosy pink petals resembling glasswork has caught the attention of the scientific community.

Interestingly, this species can be found in everyday environments such as lawns, parks, private gardens, and balconies. The discovery suggests that other new species may be hiding in common places and eliminates the need to venture into remote tropical rainforests to discover them.

The Spiranthes genus is a diverse and beautiful variety of orchids with distinctive morphological traits. Typically, they have small white or pinkish flowers arranged in a spiral around a central stalk, earning them the name “ladies’ tresses.”

Spiranthes is the most familiar orchid in Japan, and its existence has been cherished for centuries, even appearing in Japan’s oldest anthology of poetry, the Manyoshu. For a long time, it was believed that the Spiranthes on the Japanese mainland was a single species: Spiranthes australis.

However, during extensive field surveys of Japanese Spiranthes specimens, Suetsugu discovered several populations of an unknown Spiranthes taxon on the mainland of Japan with hairless flower stems, leading to reproductive isolation between the two taxa.

Thus, Suetsugu and his team embarked on a ten-year study to determine precisely how these plants differed, collecting specimens from various locations in Japan, Taiwan, and Laos.

By integrating results from DNA analysis, morphology, field observations, and reproductive biology, the team discovered that the “common” Spiranthes is actually divided into two species, with the newly discovered Spiranthes hachijoensis exhibiting a high level of molecular divergence despite minimal morphological differentiation.

This finding is likely to pique the curiosity of the general public, given that the discovery of a new flowering plant species in Japan is considered rare, given the region’s extensive research.

The fact that the new species can be found growing in commonplace environments such as parks and lawns further emphasizes the necessity of persistent exploration, even in seemingly unremarkable settings.

Source: 10.1007/s10265-023-01448-6 

Image Credit: KOBE UNIVERSITY