Giant water lilies of the genus Victoria have long been famed for their size. The leaves of the largest known species, V. boliviana, reach almost three metres across. For a long time, science knew of only three species in the genus. Now a fourth has joined them — Victoria colombiana, described in the journal Phytotaxa. According to the authors, its leaves, too, can reach two metres and are visible even from space. A fifth species, Victoria mattogrossensis, is being prepared for official recognition.
The story of the discovery began with a photograph on Instagram. The picture was taken by an American, Jeremy Harris, the owner of a carnivorous plant nursery. He captured a person swimming among enormous leaves in the Colombian region of Inírida. Harris took the plant for the widespread Victoria amazonica. Carlos Magdalena, a water lily expert at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, saw this photograph about five years ago. The geolocation on the photo pointed to Inírida, and that put him on his guard: in the Orinoco River basin, no species of the genus Victoria had ever been recorded, while the range of amazonica lies in the Amazon basin. Magdalena realised that what he was looking at was most likely something new.
Then satellite imagery came into play. On it, Magdalena made out several floating Victoria leaf blades in the Inírida River itself and in nearby lakes, meaning the plants here were not isolated individuals. The researchers then set off on a five-day expedition through flooded tropical forest. They relied on the knowledge of local people, including Indigenous communities, and their guide Gustavo Melo helped find the way where neither GPS nor mobile phone service worked. The first two plants they found were not flowering, and it is precisely the flowers that are needed to determine a species. Only on the last night, when about ten hours remained until the end of the expedition, did Melo lead the team to a small lake deep in the forest. There they found a second population, and one of the plants was in flower. That flower made it possible to collect material for the description. The researchers attribute the differences from related species to the orientation of the spines on the underside of the leaves, as well as to the shape of the flowers and fruits.
Victoria colombiana lives in only one small area of Colombia. According to experts' estimates, only 30–50 plants survive in the wild. For such a small population, a single serious pollution event or a sharp fluctuation in water level is enough to lose it. Its conservation status has not yet been definitively established: the official assessment is still in progress. The researchers also plan to collect seeds for cultivation in botanical gardens.
In parallel, another species is being prepared for recognition — Victoria mattogrossensis from the Pantanal, one of the world's largest wetland regions. To be precise: this is a long-known taxon. It was first described as a variety of Victoria cruziana, and now it is proposed to be elevated to a species in its own right. So it cannot be called a "discovery" in the strict sense. Yet taken together, the picture changes: if at the beginning of the 2020s there were three recognised species, then with the Colombian water lily there are four, and with mattogrossensis, five. Let us add that the third species, V. boliviana, was also described only in 2022: for 177 years it remained in collections under a different name. So over a few years the list has indeed grown noticeably, although "nearly twofold" is already an exaggeration.
The genus was named in honour of Queen Victoria: it was introduced in 1837 by the British botanist John Lindley. Today these plants are found with the help of social media, satellite imagery and the knowledge of Indigenous communities.
Every such discovery also reminds us of something else: describing a species is only the beginning. To keep rare water lilies from disappearing before people even learn of them, urgent measures are needed to protect their habitats.
