World’s smallest water lily saved from extinction

Two years ago, the world’s smallest water lily, a plant known as Nymphaea thermarum whose pads reach only one centimeter in diameter, disappeared from its only habitat, a few square meters near a hot spring in Mashyuza, Rwanda. Local agriculture had drained the spring of most of its water, and as a result, the water lily became extinct in the wild.

Luckily, a few samples had been collected 10 years earlier by the man who discovered the species in 1985, botanist Eberhard Fischer of Koblenz-Landau University in Germany. But unfortunately, the tiny plant proved almost impossible to propagate.

[More]