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| The New York Times
For millenniums, the Andes hid a spectacular secret. Then in May, Michael Kovach, a Virginia nursery owner, stumbled across the treasure, an orchid with an enormous magenta and purple blossom that measured 15 centimetres across and perched on a stem 30 centimetres high. "We stopped by a roadside stand where an Indian family was selling some other beautiful orchids they'd collected and they told me they had something in the back," Kovach recalls. "Then the daughter came out with one of these in bloom and it just about blew me away. It was such a stupendous thing. I'm sure my mouth fell open." Described as the most spectacular orchid find in the last 100 years, the new species has led to jaw-dropping effects throughout the world of orchid fanciers as word of the find has spread among the already breathless and excitable group. Even staid scientists are startled, because the new species is of an entirely unexpected colour, shape and size for a Phragmipedium orchid, a group whose flowers are typically small and dull brown or green, making them the uncharismatic counterpart to the beloved lady's slipper orchid relatives farther north. Orchid specialists say the newcomer is a multi-million-dollar commodity whose outsize blossoms and entirely new palette will enable breeders to produce a novel array of flashier Phragmipediums. Dr. Wesley Higgins, director of systematics at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla., remembers the moment when Kovach walked in with his prize: "We looked at it and said, `Wow, where did you get that?'" Higgins and his colleagues were so overwrought after laying eyes on the orchid that rather than following the standard protocol for naming new species — of which there are hundreds among just orchids each year — and taking months or years to draw, preserve and document the plant for publication, they set to work that very evening. In a taxonomy marathon that lasted through the night, one scientific illustrator drew the plant while another researcher wrote a scientific description. Several days later, the researchers learned that their haste had not been wasted; another scientist was rumoured to have laid hands on the same new species and was also speeding toward publication. Whoever publishes first wins the honour of determining the Latin name that will forever follow the species. To ensure fast — nearly instantaneous — publication, Selby Gardens published a special issue of its own scientific journal, Selbyana, using e-mail messages to conduct peer reviews. "We went from totally unidentified species to being published in eight days, validly, in the scientific literature," Higgins says. The Selby researchers posted their paper on June 12 and called the species Phragmipedium kovachii. It is unclear when the plant will be available for researchers and breeders, however, since the species has disappeared, thanks to orchid wranglers, from the lone site where it was known in the wild. Kovach said he bought the orchid from the family 30 kilometres north of Moyobamba, Peru, for $9.75, less than the typical price for a run-of-the-mill orchid in the United States. But when he returned three days later to buy additional plants, he found that what had been a mossy slope of 500 of the new orchids had been stripped clean, even seedlings. "They were gone," Kovach says. "There had been armies of people plucking the plants up." Since the naming of the plant, Kovach has discovered a Catch-22 of species protection. Higgins says all Phragmipedium orchids were listed as Appendix 1 species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species or CITES, which prohibits the trade or movement of the plants from country to country, making Kovach's carrying it from northeastern Peru to Florida illegal. Kovach says he wondered how he could have been expected to know he was violating an international treaty, because at that point neither he nor anyone else in the world had any idea what the plant was. "I just wanted scientists to get it and study the plant, so I took it to Selby," say Kovach, adding that he has been maligned as a plunderer of wild species because of his business of selling orchids. Some people question whether CITES always provides the best protection for endangered species such as these. Because the convention was formulated to protect wild animals and animal parts, Higgins says, it may in some cases hinder the preservation of endangered plants. "This was for elephants, rhinos, zebras, that type of thing," he says. "Plants are different. With one specimen, you can propagate it, or in a single seed capsule get 2 million to 5 million seeds. And in the laboratory, you can get a large number of those seeds to succeed." With the restrictions, he says, it is essentially impossible for researchers and laboratories to obtain the plant outside Peru. Scientists want to study the species, which has a number of singular characteristics for a Phragmipedium orchid, including its habitat at a high elevation and its unusual flowers. "We don't know a thing about the pollination of this new orchid," says John Beckner, curator of the Orchid Identification Center at Selby Gardens. The bright colour and size of the flower, Beckner says, suggested that it was highly unlikely to be visited by typical Phragmipedium flies and bees. "I'm making a wild guess," he said. "But I'd guess it's going to be one of these huge butterflies or moths in that part of the world. It would be fascinating to find a clump of these in Peru and sit for a week or two and see what came to them." Such a discovery may be some time off, since no one knows when or whether another clump of flowers will be found. "It's very hard to explore these tropical mountains and find something growing on the ground, hidden until it's in bloom among ferns and grassy vegetation and the fog," Beckner says. "It could be a job to find them. But they're out there somewhere."
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Chullo (Andean Hat)
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Visiting the "Callejon de Huaylas"
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