Good News: This Plant Was Spotted for the First Time in 100 Years
Once thought to be extinct, it was seen again in Bicol.
It's been a while since we've last seen the Elatostema catanduanense, like, a real while—about 107 years, to be exact. According to experts, it might be because of the incidents of quarrying in the area. Interestingly enough, however, a hiker in Virac had just randomly spotted the shrub earlier this week.
Catanduanes Biodiversity member-hiker John Caleb Quiñones came across a peculiar flora while hiking by a dampened rock in Virac. Upon inspection, Quiñones realized it might just be the Catanduanes-endemic shrub. Jayson Mansibang, who is a Bachelor of Science in Education major in Biology graduate and researcher at the Philippine Taxonomic Initiative, confirmed it: this was the elusive shrub. The discovery marks what would be the Elatostema catanduanense's first sighting in more than a century since it was first recognized.
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A Short History of the Elatostema Catanduanense
First sighted in 1918, Elatostema catanduanense is a perennial or subshrub and grows primarily in the wet tropical biome. This belongs to a group of species characterized by its "conspicuously serrate obliquely lanceolate leaves, its orbicular-ovate, chartaceous, fused outer bracts, and its appendiculate achenes."
The initial sighting of the Elatostema catanduanense was published together with other Philippine-specific plant species in the Philippine Journal of Science Volume XIII, with the help of world-renowned American botanist and taxonomist Elmer Drew Merill. He had spent more than two decades studying Philippine flora and had even served as the administrator of the Philippine Bureau of Science at one point.
The shrub's origins in Catanduanes are said to be at the Sto. Domingo River in Virac. According to a report by Catanduanes Biodiversity Science Communicator John Emmanuel Tayo, this was where the first species' holotype was collected.
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