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In the rugged, high-altitude meadows of the Eastern Himalayas in India, researchers have confirmed the presence of a tiny plant with purple-blue flowers, last documented in the country more than 150 years ago.
The plant, Cyananthus hookeri, was previously recorded in India by British botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker who collected some specimens from the northeastern state of Sikkim in 1867.
Last year, a research team located the species at an altitude of 3,600 meters (11,811 feet) in Chuna Valley in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh state, also in northeast India. This milestone, documented in a recent update in Oryx, marks the first confirmed record of the species in Arunachal Pradesh and the first record from India in 158 years, the researchers write.
Sudhanshu Sekhar Dash, one of the botanists on the research team from the Botanical Survey of India, told Mongabay over email that the rediscovery of Cyananthus hookeri “is an exciting and significant botanical finding.”
