“Three years ago, while scrolling through Instagram, Carlos Magdalena, a world-renowned waterlily expert at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, came across a photo of someone swimming among several giant waterlilies in the Inírida River in Guainía, Colombia.

Jeremiah Harris, who took the photo and who runs a carnivorous plant nursery in the US, was not aware of its significance, having mistakenly identified the waterlily as the more common Victoria amazonica.

However, when Magdalena saw the photo, he 'immediately suspected' something was unusual as the natural range of the Victoria amazonica does not extend to the Inírida River.

He messaged Harris to track down the exact location and spent several years analysing satellite imagery and securing the funds and necessary permits to allow him to verify the presence of the waterlily for himself…

The team collected the material needed to begin a formal identification, with a paper published on Friday in the journal Phytotaxa confirming it as a new species to science.”

From The Guardian.