When Smithsonian botanist LJ Dorr was hired by the Missouri Botanical Garden in the 1980s to set up a project focused on the flora of Madagascar, he was presented with specimens collected by Swiss colleague Laurent Gautier from poorly known regions of the island nation. A single collection from one in a series of forested massifs in north-east Madagascar was clearly a new species, which forced a rethink of the evolutionary limits of the family Dombeyaceae. Soon thereafter, Cynthia Skema, a grad student at Cornell, decided to study the genus Dombeya, from which grew the collaboration to make this remarkable new flower known. Its unique, deeply lobed leaves and modified flowers are extraordinary, but Dombeya gautieri also illustrates how international collaborations can lead to species discovery and description.
Quentin Wheeler is the director of the International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University
