The mountainous rain forests of Peru contain many of the world's orchid species. About 240 species occur in one national park alone, Tingo Maria in central Peru. The Peruvian national park service, SERNANP, announced that a new species has been located on Bella Durmiente mountain. Named Andinia tingomariana, the plant was found growing epiphytically at about 1285 meters of elevation attached to a tree trunk. The species was formally described last month in the journal Phytotaxa [photo credit: Phytotaxa] The orchid's vulnerability to extinction has not yet been determined due to a lack of data.
The news about another newly described plant species is not good. It may already be extinct. Nearly seventy years ago a researcher Edwin Ujor of the Nigerian Forestry Service collected a specimen of a tree found high in the Bamenda highlands of Cameroon. [drawing below credit H. Wilks] The identity of the specimens has been unresolved until recently when scientists from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and University of Yaounde I in Cameroon categorized it as a new species, Vepris bali, known only to occur in protected cloud forest close to the town of Bali.
Searches for more specimens of the tree have failed to locate any. Much of the original forest cover in Barmenda is now lost to agricultural clearances. So the species may be extinct. The forest reserve where the specimen was collected is only 3 square miles in area and represents one of the last remnants of what was once uninterrupted cloud forest. The region is so denuded, that it is locally known as "the grasslands" of Cameroon. Bali Ngemba Forest Reserve contains 12 species of plants known to exists nowhere else. Certainly a natural treasure worth saving.
