Amazon's Mystery of Manu: After 50 Years, Mysterious Plant Finally Identified

A scientist discovered a weird tree in the Amazon jungle in 1973 that was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It was around 20 feet tall and had small orange fruits in the shape of paper lanterns.

Wayt Thomas, a curator emeritus at The New York Botanical Garden and a Picramniaceae specialist, received specimens from the researchers. "When I initially opened the package and saw the specimens, I said to myself, 'What the heck?' "These plants didn't resemble anything else in the family," says Thomas, the paper's main author. "So I decided to take a closer look-once I focused on the small, 2-3 millimeter length blooms, everything came into place."

The researchers gave the plant a proper scientific name, Aenigmanu alvareziae when the DNA revealed which family it belonged to. The genus name, Aenigmanu, means "mystery of Manu," The species name, Patricia lvarez-Loayza, is named after Patricia lvarez-Loayza, who gathered the first specimens for genetic research. (It's worth mentioning that, while scientists are unfamiliar with Aenigmanu alvareziae, the Indigenous Machiguenga have long utilized it.)

The researchers believe that finally, giving Aenigmanu alvareziae a scientific categorization will help safeguard the Amazon rainforest from deforestation and climate change.

"Plants, in general, are understudied. Plants from tropical forests, in particular. Plants from the Amazon, in particular. And, in particular, flora in the Amazon's higher reaches. Plants are the foundation for everything that lives there and the most important to study," says Foster. "To understand the changes taking place in the tropics, to protect what remains, and to restore areas that have been wiped out, plants are the foundation for everything that lives there and the most important to study." "The easiest approach to arrange information about them and draw attention to them is to give them distinctive names. A single uncommon species may not be relevant to an ecosystem on its own, but together they tell us what is going on."

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