One would never expect to see lush pink-petaled plants in a dark cave, but it is precisely here that researchers have discovered a new species of Pilea, a bushy evergreen belonging to the Urticaceae family, Pilea Cavernicola.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
One would never expect to see any luxuriant ones plants with pink-petaled flowers in a dark cave, but it is exactly here that the researchers discovered a new species of Pilea, an evergreen bushy habit belonging to the Urticaceae family, the Pilea Cavernicola.
We are in the south of China. Within this area, there are thousands of caves and ravines that researchers have only recently tried to explore. The botanist Alex Monro, of the Natural History Museum in London, said he thought his Chinese colleague YG Wei mistranslated a Chinese word into English when he mentioned the Pilea Cavernicola. But then he saw her.
“When we entered our first cave, the Yangzi cave, I was enchanted. He had the appearance of a creepy lunar landscape and all I could see were clumps of plants belonging to the pilea family, growing in very dark conditions, ”Monro said in a note, describing the study published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. These plants do not grow in complete darkness, but under conditions of poor lighting, deep inside the caves (less than 0,04% sunlit).
For several years, the two have collected Pilea plants in this limestone landscape, of which it is thought there are over 700 species from all over the world. one third of which has not yet been described. In fact, in those caves they also found two other species of plants, belonging to the same family of nettles, the Pilea guizhouensis, able to cling to the vertical walls of canyons, and the Pilea shizongensis, which always grows in the dark and gives life to pink flowers.
Roberta Ragni
