A tourist's Instagram photo led scientists to a giant new water lily

Five years ago, Kew botanist Carlos Magdalena spotted an unfamiliar lily in a tourist's Instagram photo. He tracked it via satellite to Colombia's Inírida River and — with Indigenous boatman Gustavo Melo racing a 1 a.m. boat trip before their flight home — found a flowering plant. Described as Victoria colombiana in the journal Phytotaxa, it is only the fourth giant water lily species known, with an estimated 30 to 50 plants in the wild.