A scientist with the Missouri Botanical Garden has rediscovered and identified a rare parasitic plant that hasn't been seen by botanists in more than 20 years.
A single specimen of the plant was found in Mexico in 1985, but the plant wasn't seen again until St. Louis botanist George Yatskievych and a colleague found it in a pine oak forest in Mexico's mountains.
The plant, which he is identifying and naming for the first time, is not a classic beauty. The odd, orange-brown, fleshy-stemmed plant — which will have the formal Latin name for the "little hermit of Mexico" — has a pine cone-shaped dense cluster of flowers and juicy celery-like stalks.
But to Yatskievych, it's "weird and wonderful."
"I've always been interested in plants that don't conform to our preconceived notion of what a plant should be," he said. "Beauty is in the beholder's eye and this plant is wonderful in so many ways.
"You can't call it ugly, but on the other hand, I recognize it's not everyone's cup of tea."
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