Hidden Inca treasure: New tree discovered in the Andes

Hidden in plain sight – that’s how researchers describe their discovery of a new genus of large forest tree commonly found, yet previously scientifically unknown, in the tropical Andes.

Researchers from the Smithsonian and Wake Forest University detailed their findings in a study just released in the journal PhytoKeys.

Named Incadendron esseri (literally “Esser’s tree of the Inca”), the tree is a new genus and species commonly found along an ancient Inca path in Peru, the Trocha Unión. Its association with the land of the Inca empire inspired its scientific name.

So how could a canopy tree stretching up to 100 feet tall and spanning nearly two feet in diameter go undetected until now?

“Incadendron tells us a lot about how little we understand life on our planet. Here is a tree that ranges from southern Peru to Ecuador, that is abundant on the landscape, and yet it was unknown,” said Miles Silman, the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation Presidential Chair in Conservation Biology at Wake Forest.

“Finding this tree isn’t like finding another species of oak or another species of hickory — it’s like finding oak or hickory in the first place.”
Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Family Foundation Presidential Chair in Conservation Biology

“This tree perplexed researchers for several years before being named as new. It just goes to show that so much biodiversity is unknown and that obvious new species are awaiting discovery everywhere – in remote ecological plots, as well as in our own backyards,” said Kenneth Wurdack, a botanist with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

[link to news.wfu.edu]