A coincidence allowed scientific knowledge and the ancestral wisdom of Indigenous peoples to come together to produce one of the most important botanical discoveries in Colombia: the discovery of a water lily (also known as a nymphaea or water lily) that is as rare as it is short-lived.
It all began five years ago, when Carlos Magdalena, a horticulturist and researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was browsing Instagram and came across photographs taken by Jeremiah Harris, a renowned carnivorous plant grower from the United States, in the region of Inirida, Guainia, in the Colombian Orinoquia.
The images showed an ancient plant commonly known as Victoria amazonica. That was what Harris believed it to be, and that is how he classified it. But Magdalena was surprised because there were no records of Victorias in the Orinoco basin.
Scientific Knowledge Combined with Indigenous Wisdom
That doubt was the first step on a research journey that would eventually confirm that it was a species previously unknown to science.
Scientific procedures using highly advanced technology would follow: satellite images made it possible to locate Victoria plants in lakes near the Inirida River.
Another step was the contact established by horticulturist and researcher Magdalena with the Jose Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden of Bogota (JBB), an institution with experience cultivating species of this genus since the 1970s and which maintains a collaboration with Kew.
At the JBB, he connected with biologist Mauricio Bernal Rodriguez, who has worked there for a decade and joined the team of researchers that has just revealed the new Victoria species in an article published by the scientific journal Phytotaxa.
The research also drew on scientific knowledge alongside the wisdom of members of Indigenous communities in the region.
Members of Indigenous reserves in the territory, such as Nilo Rodriguez, Jaime Hernandez, and Gustavo Melo, who run a nature tourism company, offered to take the team to see Victoria plants in their natural state.
This led to a five-day expedition along the Inirida and Guaviare rivers. The team initially found only two individuals, but neither was flowering.
This posed a significant difficulty, since a flower was necessary to obtain fertile botanical samples for the scientific description.
The Discovery of Victoria colombiana
But the moment finally arrived when, just before sunrise, the guides and researchers reached a small lake in the middle of the jungle and found five additional individuals, including one in flower.
In total, they managed to document seven plants in two lakes, thereby obtaining the material needed to formally begin describing the new species.
They named it Victoria colombiana, adding it to the genus Victoria, which has three other known species.
Its enormous leaves can reach up to three meters in diameter, making it one of the great plant giants of tropical aquatic ecosystems.
It is estimated that only between 30 and 50 individuals remain in the wild, highlighting the plant’s extreme rarity and the need to strengthen conservation efforts.
The researchers are working toward a future official assessment of the species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
Among the conservation alternatives being considered is establishing a naturalized population in a more accessible lake within Indigenous territory. This initiative could contribute both to protecting the species and to developing community-based ecotourism activities.
It is also expected that seed collection will continue so that specimens can be cultivated at the Bogota Botanical Garden and the species can be studied under controlled conditions.
“This is one of those extraordinary stories in which Indigenous and horticultural knowledge (with the help of social media and technology) came together to reveal a truly exceptional botanical achievement,” Magdalena said, as quoted in a statement from the Bogota Mayor’s Office. “It also reminds us that nature is still full of surprises and wonders.”