A new plant species was recently discovered in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. It’s being called the “wooly devil.”
A volunteer with the park’s botany program and a park ranger first noticed the tiny, fuzzy plants in desert rocks last March.
Not being able to recognize the plant, they took photos and used those to research databases and records, the park said. Nothing and no one else could identify the plant.
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“The California Academy of Sciences, Sul Ross University, and Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación para el Desarrollo Integral Regional joined park staff in the study of the new plant,” the park said in a press release. “A genetic analysis revealed that this plant is so distinctive that it is not just a new species but best classified as an entirely new genus within the Asteraceae (Daisy) family.”
The newly-discovered plant is officially named Ovicula biradiata.
“Ovicula = tiny sheep, in reference to the thick white “wool” that covers the leaves, and biradiata = referencing the two conspicuous ray petals in each flower,” said park officials.
However, researchers are affectionately calling it the “wooly devil.”
Details of the discovery were published in the peer-reviewed botanical journal PhytoKeys.
“Other recent scientific discoveries in Big Bend National Park include a fossil record of a new species of Duck-billed dinosaur (Malefica deckerti) and detection of a species of oak (Quercus tardifolia) once considered extinct,” the park said.
