Vanishing Wildflower Once Thought Extinct Reappears in a Forgotten Meadow

Field report

The rediscovery sheds light on these elusive native blooms and could inspire efforts to protect their vanishing meadow habitats.

Melissa Breyer was Treehugger's senior editorial director before moving to Martha Stewart. Her writing and photography have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Audubon Magazine, and elsewhere.

Looking like something conjured from a fairy tale rather than grown from soil, the ghost orchid family is one of the plant world's strangest creations. While most wildflowers flaunt green leaves to catch sunlight, these pale wanderers have no use for photosynthesis at all. They are mycoheterotrophs — plants that pilfer their nourishment from underground fungal networks that themselves feed on the roots of towering canopy trees. Growing unseen beneath the forest floor, their translucent blossoms push through leaf litter like tiny lanterns glowing in the dim understory. Roughly 90 species have been documented, but so demanding are their growing conditions that many are known from just a single patch of ground, sometimes from one solitary plant.

Such was the fate of the prairie fringe orchid, once found in a single meadow outside Kobe City, Japan, in 1992. As is all too common, its habitat was obliterated — in this case by an industrial complex that paved over the damp grassland. Despite decades of searching by botanists who combed the surrounding hillsides with hand lenses and notebooks, no other specimen ever turned up. The plant was written off as extinct.

But now, after more than 30 years, Professor Kenji Suetsugu and his colleagues at Kobe University report its rediscovery in Sanda City, a little less than 20 miles from the original site — tucked in a soggy clearing surrounded by second-growth forest.

Refinding a member of such a fragile and little-understood genus is thrilling, and subsequent investigations into the rediscovered orchid have shed new light on the entire group's evolutionary story.

New Insight on a North American Ghost Orchid

Among the puzzles surrounding these ghostly wildflowers, one species — the eastern prairie fringed orchid — has a baffling distribution pattern that has long stumped botanists. But the new discovery appears to offer some clues.

The eastern prairie fringed orchid, the only known North American relative of the Japanese species, was discovered over 100 years ago in a wet prairie near Chicago. Observed for just a few seasons and now considered extirpated from that site, botanists originally believed it was most closely related to species in Australia and New Zealand.

But a detailed morphological investigation suggested that the rediscovered Japanese orchid is actually the closest living relative of the North American species. The authors note that "the similarity in outer floral shape between the North American species and the Australia-New Zealand species may have evolved independently based on pollinator preferences. This suggests that the North American species may actually be unrelated to the Australia-New Zealand group."

From the study: "Plant species in Eastern Asia and North America having close relationships and disjunct distributions across these regions is not uncommon and can often be attributed to migration through the Beringia land bridge. Therefore, the disjunct distribution of the North American species may be due to migration through Beringia."

Saving the Vanishing Wildflowers

The rediscovery of the Japanese orchid after three decades has significantly advanced researchers' understanding of these elusive wildflowers and provides crucial insight into the biogeography and evolutionary history of the entire genus.

But its discovery could also play a role in conservation efforts as well.

As the planet's living things teeter on the brink of a sixth mass extinctionThe end of a species when its last individual dies. Mass extinctions affect many groups at once. — and every other day brings news of another species gone for good — the rediscovery of such a rare and fragile (and strange and beautiful!) wildflower provides a glimmer of something other than despair. For scientists, the find offers fresh motivation for pursuing new conservation efforts.

"Although these wildflowers are tiny and inconspicuous, they have been described as one of the most curious and extraordinary genera in the plant kingdom, and their odd appearance and life strategy make them exceptional among herbs," write the study authors in their conclusion.

They explain that the forest environs of the rediscovered orchid are almost entirely "disturbed" by logging but that the discovery might provide a push for local initiatives to obtain official protection for these forests, as has happened with other related species. "Owing to its striking pale coloration," note the authors, "it could become a particularly iconic species in Japan."

We usually lean on charismatic fauna like spotted owls and giant pandas to push for habitat protection. But now, could a luminous and ethereal oddball of a wildflower become a poster child for saving meadows and woodlands?

The study, "Rediscovery of the presumably extinct fairy lantern Thismia kobensis (Thismiaceae) in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, with discussions on its taxonomy, evolutionary history, and conservation" was published in the journal, Phytotaxa.