A chance sighting of photos on Instagram, then a five-day expedition, including a last-minute, late-night detour in a Colombian rainforest — that’s what it took for researchers to confirm a new-to-science species of giant water lily. The plant has such large leaves the researchers could also spot it from space, according to a new study. The saga started in 2021, when giant-water-lily expert Carlos Magdalena came across photos posted by Jeremiah Harris on Instagram. In the photos, Harris, who runs a carnivorous-plant nursery in the U.S., was swimming next to giant water lily leaves in Colombia’s Inírida River. Harris had labelled the plant a wild individual of Victoria amazonica, but Magdalena knew that no known species of South American giant water lilies from the genus Victoria had previously been reported from the Orinoco Basin, of which the Inírida River is a tributary. “So the moment I saw the picture on Instagram with a geolocation on Inírida I realized it was remarkable,” Magdalena, a botanical and scientific research horticulturist at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, U.K., told Mongabay by email. Intrigued, Magdalena turned to satellite imagery. Giant water lilies have massive, circular leaves, more than 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter, and Magdalena spotted several Victoria floating pads in the Inírida and nearby lakes. This confirmed there were more Victoria water lilies in that river system. Magdalena then formed a team with researchers, as well as with Nilo Rodríguez, Jaime Hernández, and Gustavo Melo, members of the Río Atabapo, Caranacoa-Yurí-Laguna Morocoto, and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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