A new rare species was discovered in the Azores .
An international team of scientists has discovered on the island of São Jorge , the rarest orchid in Europe , it is a new species that had previously been identified by German botanist Karl Hochstetter, in the nineteenth century, who studied intensively the Azorean archipelago. The endemic plant has now been named after this scientist, as an honor, so is going to be called orchid butterfy Hochstetter , whose scientific name is Phlantadera azorica, that after demanding and rigorous taxonomic tests was also regarded as the rarest of Europe.
The British team led by Richard Bateman, with the collaboration of the morphologist Paula Rudall, but it was the Portuguese botanist Mónica Moura ( University of Azores ) that, while exploring the laurel forest site in search of butterflies orchids, sensed the rare flower. The discovery was published in PeerJ, the scientific journal , in an article published this week entitled " Systematic revision of Platanthera in the Azorean archipelago ": not one but three species , including arguably Europe's rarest orchid " and that is illustrated with a photograph of the 'new' orchid with 173 years of existence in full anonymity, a delicate plant with several flowers of a translucent green, which remains isolated in the cliffs of the mountains of St. George and will soon be officially classified .
