World's Smallest Orchid Discovered (By Accident)

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com World's Smallest Orchid Discovered (By Accident) The world's smallest known orchid (pictured)—just over 2 millimeters (0.08 inch) across and nearly see-through—has been discovered nestled in the roots of another flower in Ecuador, scientists announced this week. Lou Jost, an ecologist with the EcoMinga plant-conservation foundation, has studied the plants of the South American country's mountainous forests for 15 years. Earlier this year he'd collected an orchid of a larger species to study in his greenhouse. "Several months later I saw this tiny plant," he said. Ecuador's mountains are havens of biodiversity, where plants on one mountain may be entirely different from those on a neighboring peak. In the region where the tiny orchid was found, Jost also recently discovered 28 new orchids in the Teagueia genus, a group previously thought to contain only 6 species. Ecuador as a whole is home to 4,000 known orchid species—a thousand of them discovered in the past 12 years alone.