‘First in 50 Years’: National-Park Volunteer Discovers New Species

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Big Bend National Park volunteer Deb Manley came across a unique plant last March in Texas’s Chihuahuan Desert. She took a photo and uploaded it to iNaturalist, but no one knew what it was. Turns out, the plant was a new species. Manley co-authored a scientific report on her find, which recently published in the scientific journal PhytoKeys.

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The new species is called the woolly devil (Ovicula biradiata), and it’s the first new plant genus discovered in a U.S. national park in about 50 years. According to the California Academy of Sciences, the last time this happened was back in 1976, when scientists discovered the mountain-dwelling shrub July gold (Dedeckera eurekensis) in California’s Death Valley National Park.

The wooly devil is a small, fuzzy plant with red “horn”-like blooms coming out from the center. It’s a relative of the sunflower family, but scientists say O. biradiata is distinct enough to warrant its own genus.

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See the new plant species discovered in Big Bend National Park here: