With armed guards to kept drug
smugglers and illegal loggers at bay, an intrepid team of UK botanists trekked through
the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia – and found a strange orchid.
They brought it back to Kew,
where it flowered in December, forming a weird, maroon flower with a distinctly
warty look. It turned out to be a brand new species, belonging to the genus
Porpax.
Sadly, it’s not on display, but
there’s a photograph of the previously undocumented bloom. It is one centimetre
long and tubular, and rather different from anything you’ve ever seen. (Pictured is a similar flower, Porpax meirax, slightly paler in colour, and wart-free, but sufficient to give you an idea.)
Porpax is a genus of epiphytic
orchids native to southern and south-eastern Asia from India to Yunnan to
Borneo. Up to this find, it had contained only 13 currently recognised species as of June 2014.
Caption: a Porpax meirax, of the
same genus. Plate 7329 in Curtis's Botanical Magazine (Orchidaceae), vol. 119, (1893).
By Pamela Kelt
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