The devil's in the details of this new plant species spotted in West Texas. It's in the sunflower family, yet looks nothing like your classic yellow-and-black petaled disk. An article published in the peer-reviewed botanical journal PhytoKeys this February first described the plant — known by the common name “woolly devil” — found at Big Bend National Park.
The article isn't exactly light reading for non-botanists. The important beats are: this plant is living in the Chihuahuan Desert; it is a new genus of Compositae (the "daisy" family, which also contains sunflowers) called Ovicula biradiata; and it is "very locally abundant" within a limited range. It is considered a monospecific genus, because so far there is only one species within the genus.
In plain terms, this is a small plant less than an inch wide. It is "woolly," which means its green, folded leaves are covered in white fuzz, and it has some interesting, paper-like protrusions (ray florets) with maroon stripes (veins).
Sunflower-lovers may already know this fact: the Compositae family contains plants that look like single flowers, but are actually a collection of many florets. It is these ray florets that give the plant its devilish name. In a sunflower, a ray floret is what most people would call the petal, while the disc florets are what emerge from the middle portion.
The California Academy of Sciences points out that this is the first new plant genus and species discovery in the U.S. national parks for nearly half a century. The academy is involved in the discovery because dried specimens were sent there for additional study.
It credits park volunteer Deb Manley with the discovery in March 2024. She used the community science app iNaturalist to share it with botanists around the world.
Park visitors probably won't notice the woolly devil while hiking, not just because they're small but also because they only bloom after rain. But if hikers do see something, iNaturalist users are always eager to see more. Users share observations of common birds, interesting fungi, and of course unidentified plants, among many other things. The app currently houses nearly 230 million observations.
