Researchers have discovered a new type of tree that has human-sized leaves.
The National Institute for Amazonian Studies (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil, displays giant dried leaves.
It has been a local landmark for decades. However, the type of tree to which the leaves belong has remained a mystery … until now.
Researchers know that this tree belongs to the species Coccoloba, a genus of flowering plants that grows in the rainforests of the Americas.
INPA botanists first found Coccoloba leaves in 1982 while surveying the Madeira River Basin in the Brazilian Amazon.
On subsequent expeditions in the 1980s, they found more specimens of this plant, but at that time they were unable to pinpoint the species.
The individual trees then did not bear any flowers or fruits that are necessary to describe the plant species, and their leaves were too large to carry back to INPA.
The researchers took only notes and photographs. In 1993, botanists finally managed to collect two large leaves from a tree in the state of Rondonia, which they then filed for public viewing at INPA.
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“The species became locally known, but due to the lack of reproductive material, it could not be described as a new species for science,” said Rogerio Grib, researcher at INPA.
More than ten years later, in 2005, Carlos Alberto Cid Ferreira collected several seeds and wilting flowers from a tree in the Jamari National Forest.
Again, these materials were not good enough to describe plant species. So they sowed seeds on the INPA campus, raised seedlings and waited. Their patience bore fruit 13 years later. Literally.
In 2018, one of the trees planted blossomed and bore fruit, finally giving them the botanical material they needed to describe new species.
“We are very pleased and proud that after a long period of 'tracking down' such a peculiar and relatively rare species, we have finally managed to obtain flowers and fruits, which are the necessary structures for describing a new species for science,” he said.
Scientists who described this species in a recent article published in Acta Amazonica named it C. gigantifolia.