Discovery of a giant plant on a former Inca trail in Peru

This is a new genus and a new species of tree that was discovered in the tropical Andes.

We really wondered how this giant, 26 m height and a trunk diameter of 60 cm, was able to pass unnoticed in the eyes of botanists up to now. These are researchers from the Smithsonian and the Wake Forest University (North Carolina) who have identified this tree, called Incadendron esseri, literally the tree inca Esser (after the name of Hans-Joachim Esser, German botanist). These trees are present along an ancient Inca trail, the Trocha Union, Peru. It is also found in Ecuador, also in the tropical Andes between 1800 and 2400 m above sea level (work published in the journal PhytoKeys ).

"Incadendron tells us how few things are known about the life of our planet," says Miles Silman of Wake Forest University who has studied for 25 years these ecosystems in the andes. "It's not as if we discovered a new species of oak or pine. It is like finding an oak tree for the first time".
Branch Incadendron esseri.

Incadendron belongs to the Euphorbia family (330 genera and 6300 species), which counts in its ranks the rubber trees, the manioc or poinsettias. Like the rubber tree, its trunk releases white sap, like latex, if he is injured. It autoféconde and presents an unusual combination of characteristics, such as leaves mucilage (covered in mucus), white flowers, large fruits...

"It has been many years that we was puzzling," acknowledges Kenneth Wurdack, a botanist at the national Museum of natural history at the Smithsonian. "It took us well to study it before naming it. This shows that there is still a lot of biodiversity to reveal, as well without doubt in some ecological niches that in our gardens".