A golden camellia nobody knew, found higher than any of its kind — fewer than 100 remain

High on the limestone mountains of southern Yunnan, at 1,650 metres — higher than any yellow camellia has ever been recorded — a shrub was flowering pale gold where science had not thought to look. Camellia guiliangii, formally described this month in the journal PhytoKeys, grows just 2 to 4 metres tall, opens blossoms 3 to 5 centimetres wide from October to January, and was confirmed as its own lineage using 881 genes. It is named for Guiliang Zhang of the Daweishan National Nature Reserve. It is also desperately rare: fewer than 100 individuals, in only two populations, provisionally assessed as Critically Endangered. A formal name sounds like paperwork; for a plant this rare it is the opposite — the first, practical step that lets reserves, laws and funding notice it exists. The karst forests of Maguan County still hold unnamed life; this one, at least, now has its name on the list of things worth saving.

SDG 15 · Life on land