A botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was scrolling Instagram in 2021 when a photo from eastern Colombia stopped him. It showed a giant water lily floating on a river in the Inírida region. The caption called it Victoria amazonica. Carlos Magdalena, one of the world's leading waterlily experts, knew that species was not supposed to grow there.

Five years later, a paper in Phytotaxa describes what the photo showed: a new species, Victoria colombiana, and one that already appears to be on the edge of extinction.

Why the Photo Looked Wrong

Magdalena, Kew's botanical and scientific research horticulturist, noticed that the known range of giant water lilies does not extend to the Inírida River, in the Guainía department of Colombia. The river sits in the headwaters of the Orinoco, South America's third-longest river. That mismatch led him to suspect something new, according to Kew's announcement. The photo was taken by Jeremiah Harris, a horticulturist who had identified the plant as the Amazon species.

A hunch from one picture is not evidence, so the team went looking. Yale Environment 360 reported that Magdalena scanned satellite images of the river until he spotted a cluster of the unmistakable round pads, which can be about two meters wide. Maarten Christenhusz of Kew said new species turn up all the time but few are as large and emblematic, and that this one can even be seen from space.

Finding a Flower at the Last Minute

To name a plant species, botanists need a flowering specimen. The expedition, supported by Colombian researchers and Indigenous community members, ran five days and nearly came back empty, Newser reported, summarizing Gizmodo. Yale E360 said a boatman led the team at 1 a.m. deep into the forest to a small lake with five water lilies, one of them with a flower.

A researcher named Pedraza-Peñalosa, of DreamGIS Colombia, later located a third lake with the plant, according to Kew. The paper, "Discovery of a new species of Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) in the Orinoco watershed of Colombia," appeared in Phytotaxa 778(2).

Fewer Than 50 Plants

The news is not only good. Researchers estimate that only 30 to 50 plants of the new species remain in the wild, according to Kew and Newser, and the team plans to seek a Critically Endangered listing from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Kew headlines it as already Critically Endangered, but the formal assessment has not been completed.

That makes this a discovery and a rescue at once. The team told reporters they are working to set up monitored populations in local lakes and to grow the plant in botanical gardens in Colombia and the United Kingdom. The sources I read do not detail what threatens the lilies, so the main danger may simply be how few individuals exist.

A Genus That Keeps Growing

The paper also argues that a waterlily previously called Victoria mattogrossensis, from Brazil's Pantanal, deserves recognition as a species of its own, TechTimes reported. If accepted, the genus Victoria now has five species, up from two as recently as 2021. That count includes a Bolivian species Kew and collaborators described in 2022.

These are not obscure plants. Giant waterlilies are among the best-known aquatic plants, grown in botanical gardens for more than a century. That the genus could have been so poorly sorted out says something about how much of South America's wetland flora is still being catalogued.

How the Discovery Happened

Magdalena described the project as a blend of Indigenous knowledge, horticultural expertise and technology "in your pocket," whether Instagram or WhatsApp, according to Newser. It is a useful reminder that a species can be found through a chain: a casual photo, an expert's doubt, satellite imagery, local guides and a patient search for one flower.

Blogerroom has covered a similar pattern with a coral reef declared dead in the 1960s that was found alive off Benin, where local knowledge and a fresh look changed the record. Both show how much of the natural world is better known to people on the ground than to scientific databases.

What to Watch Next

First, the IUCN assessment, which would give the lily formal protection status. Second, whether the monitored populations and garden collections can build a safety net of seeds and plants before wild numbers fall further. Third, how the five-species classification fares with other taxonomists.

My view: the story invites a smile, but the number to remember is 30 to 50. A plant visible from space went unrecorded by science until only a few dozen individuals were left. As Blogerroom reported in its look at why protecting standing Amazon forest beats replanting trees, keeping what exists is far cheaper than rebuilding it later. For a plant this rare, that may be the only option.