Two new flowering plants, found only in one Colombian cloud-forest reserve, now have names

High in Colombia's Cordillera Occidental, the Mesenia-Paramillo Nature Reserve shelters 3,700 hectares of cloud forest where the Chocó lowlands meet the Andes. Botanists writing in the journal PhytoKeys have now formally described two plants found nowhere else on Earth: Besleria purpureovenosa, named for the dark purple veins beneath its leaves, and Besleria roseocalyx, whose rose-pink flower cups frame a yellow bloom — a colour pairing rare in its family. Giving a species a name is the first act of protecting it: what science can name, conservation can count, fund and defend.

SDG 15 · Life on land