Big things are happening at Big Bend National Park.
A brand-new plant genus has been discovered in Texas, and it's great news for conservationists and botanists alike.
Deb Manley, a volunteer for the park's botany program, stumbled upon the peculiar plant in March of last year, per CBS News. Manley snapped photos of the fuzzy-looking plant with yellow flowers and posted them to iNaturalist, which describes itself as "an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature."
When park staffers couldn't identify the plant, Manley worked with scientists to try to find out more, but it soon became clear that this was something entirely new — so new, in fact, that "it is not just a new species but best classified as an entirely new genus within the Asteraceae (Daisy) family," according to the National Park Service.
The plant is nicknamed wooly devil for its fuzzy appearance and the location where it was found, the Devil's Den. Its scientific name is Ovicula biradiata — Ovicula meaning tiny sheep and biradiata for its two petals.
It's the first time a plant genus has been discovered in a national park since 1976, when July gold (Dedeckera eurekensis) was found in Death Valley National Park, according to the California Academy of Sciences.
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As climate change threatens thousands of existing species, new species help conservationists better understand how a changing environment affects the ecosystem and develop more effective ways to protect plants and animals. Although the wooly devil was just discovered, the plant's small, arid location preliminarily qualifies it as "vulnerable and under a high threat of extinction," according to the study, published in PhytoKeys.
Anjna O'Connor, the superintendent of Big Bend National Park, is looking forward to learning more about the wooly devil.
"Now that the species has been identified and named, there is a tremendous amount we have yet to learn about it," she told the NPS. "I'm excited to discover whether there are other populations in the park, details of its life cycle, what are the pollinators, and due to the current drought, if it will be observed at all this spring."
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