New orchid species discovered in Japan

Because Kenji Suetsugu of Kobe University and his team initially found it on the Pacific island of Hachijō-jima, administratively part of Tokyo, they named the orchid Spiranthes hachijoensis. The researchers were all the more surprised that the new species grows in completely inconspicuous environments such as parks and even on balconies.

With their pink petals, they resemble artistic “glassware,” the scientists describe their discovery in the “Journal of Plant Research.” The new species belongs to the genus Spiranthes, the most famous orchid species in Japan and has been highly valued there for centuries.

For a long time, researchers thought that Spiranthes on the Japanese main island of Honshu were a single species: Spiranthes australis. However, during extensive field research focusing on Japanese Spiranthes specimens, Suetsugu encountered several populations of an unknown Spiranthes taxon with hairless flower stalks.

Art has simply been overlooked until now
The unknown taxon often grows alongside Spiranthes australis, but blooms about a month earlier, it said. Since Spiranthes australis is characterized by a hairy flower stalk, the hairless specimens may simply have been overlooked.

The fact that such a new species has been found in Japan, with its intensively researched flora, and that it grows in ordinary parks, gardens and balconies shows that one does not have to travel to remote tropical rainforests to make such discoveries.