Giant secret - 12th August 2022

Serious detective work by a team of experts has identified a new type of giant waterlily. Botanists had long suspected that there were three types of giant waterlily, but it wasn't until seeds provided by two botanical gardens in Bolivia were grown in London’s Kew Gardens that the new species was identified.

The new waterlily’s part of the same Victoria genus as the existing Amazonica and Cruziana varieties. It's been named Victoria Boliviana as the seeds came from Bolivia.

It’s taken four years for the waterlily to reveal its true identity. The team working on the project, anxious not to reveal their discovery too soon, kept the plant unlabelled but in plain sight.

The detailed research work of the botanists included DNA analysis. For Carlos Magdalena, scientific and botanical research horticulturist, it highlights how little we know about our natural world.

Carlos Magdalena: "Taxonomists, we discover about 2,000 species every year. So, it is not rare to find a new species. What I think is very unusual is a plant the size with this level of fame to be discovered in, in the year 2022. That is quite unusual. It also highlights how many things could be out there, isn't it."

Victoria Boliviana grows lilypads of over three metres in diameter and, curiously, its many flowers only open one at a time. These blooms last for just two nights, turning from white to pink in the process, and are covered in giant prickles. Lucy Smith’s a botanic artist at Kew.

Lucy Smith: "When I was finally able to observe a fully open flower, that's when it really hit me and hit us that this was something completely different from the other species. It was a spectacular flower. It was one of the largest flowers I'd seen. And the colouring and the structures were very different from the other species."

Kew Gardens is the only place in the world where all three species of giant waterlily can be seen growing together.