A New Giant Waterlily Species Was First Noticed in an Instagram Photo

A new species of giant waterlily was discovered because someone posted a photo of one on Instagram. The photo was taken by a botanist who thought he was photographing a kind already known to science, but the place the picture came from told another expert that something new was growing there.

The photo that was in the wrong place

The picture was taken by Jeremiah Harris, a botanist. He had labelled the huge waterlily in it as Victoria amazonica, a species already described. What caught the attention of waterlily expert Carlos Magdalena, from the Royal Botanic Gardens, was not the plant itself but the location: the Inírida River in Guainía, Colombia. That river lies beyond the natural range of Victoria amazonica, which suggested to Magdalena that the waterlily in the photo was not what it appeared to be. He was right. The plant was later given the name Victoria colombiana.

A search that came down to the last night

Satellite images confirmed that giant waterlilies were growing in the Inírida. These plants are big enough to be seen from space. A field trip to Colombia was carefully arranged. Magdalena and his fellow researchers, working alongside experts from local Indigenous reserves, spent almost five days looking for a waterlily in flower that matched the one in the photo.

That mattered because officially naming a new species requires a pressed and dried plant specimen, taken from a plant that was flowering. The season was late and the water was high, and the waterlilies the team found were not cooperating. It was only on the final night, less than ten hours before their flight home, that the search succeeded. A local boatman, Gustavo Melo, led the group downriver at one in the morning. They reached a small lake in complete darkness and found five of the new waterlilies, one of which was in flower. That meant the formal identification of Victoria colombiana could begin.

Big leaves, very small numbers

As a family, these waterlilies can reach more than six and a half feet across, and they are among the oldest plants still living today. The new species is far rarer than it is big. The researchers estimate that only 30 to 50 Victoria colombiana plants exist in the wild, which puts them at high risk of dying out. The plan is to have them placed on the Critically Endangered list managed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The study describing the species has been published in the journal Phytotaxa. The same study also recognises another species, Victoria mattogrossensis, from the Pantanal region, and notes that rivers and their floodwaters are the main way these plants spread, because no animal is known to carry their seeds.

Magdalena said the case was one of those extraordinary stories where Indigenous and horticultural knowledge, with the help of social media and technology, came together to uncover a truly extraordinary botanical achievement. It is also, he added, a reminder that nature is still full of surprises and wonder.