JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
We're at the end of a calendar year, which means everywhere you look, you'll see a year in review list for something. Top Google searches. Most streamed TV shows. Best albums of the year. Well, here's a list you probably haven't seen - new plant and fungus species discovered in 2024. Martin Cheek is a conservation botanist and a senior research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Hi, there.
MARTIN CHEEK: Hello. Good to be on your show, Juana. Thanks.
SUMMERS: Martin, I understand that you and your team discovered 172 species of plants and fungi this year. I'd love to hear about maybe one or two plants or fungi that we now know about that we didn't before.
CHEEK: Well, my favorite one is one that I was involved in discovering, and this is a rainforest liana, so it's a climber in Guinea, West Africa. And this one notably smells of marzipan when you scrape the bark of the roots or the stems. It's special to me because not only is a new species, but it's a new genus to science as well. And that happens much less frequently than discovering a new species.
SUMMERS: Martin, I have just sort of a practical question. Is it that you're off walking in a forest and you stumble upon a completely new thing that no one's ever seen before? Or if that's not the case, how does one discover a species? What is that like?
CHEEK: It can happen. Just as you say, you can be walking on a path in a forest, doing a survey, and this thing matches no known species, and that is very, very exciting. But more usually, you'll have a suspicion, and then you're collecting a specimen, making it flat and dry. And then it might be only when you get that specimen back that you can work out that it's a new species to science. And I should also say that there have been specimens sitting in a herbarium for tens of years, even. And so there can be big delays between a specimen being collected of what turns out to be new species and it being formally published as new to science.
SUMMERS: New discoveries are, of course, incredibly exciting. But explain to us why it's so important to continue finding and identifying these new species.
CHEEK: Because we're finding that the vast majority of the new species that we're finding these days are already threatened with extinction at the point of publication. And the reason for this is most of the widespread and more common species have already been encountered by science and scientists, so they've already been published. And the species that we're finding now, more frequently, they've only got a really small range - one mountain top or one small area - automatically makes them more threatened by humans from habitat clearance, which is the biggest threat to species.
SUMMERS: Martin, when I talk to music or film critics about their top 10 lists, I always ask them about their favorites. But I want to ask you - is there a plant discovery in 2024 that you found particularly fascinating, that perhaps flew under the radar, that you want to tell us about?
CHEEK: Ooh. I don't know about under the radar, but one discovery I really liked, which I wasn't connected with, was in the island of Borneo, and this is a new species of climbing palm. Everyone will know climbing palms because it's the stems of climbing palms that are used to make rattan or cane furniture. But this particular species is known as the ghost palm by one of the local communities because the back of the leaf and the stems are a ghostly white color. So scientists have known about it, but it's had no name. And the reason why it's had no name is because it's never been found in flower or in fruit. And the convention is - with taxonomic botanists such as myself - is that you don't formally name a species as new to science until you're able to describe the flowers and the fruits. Until a species gets a name on, you can't put on an official IUCN conservation rating and conservation measures to avoid their extinction. And therefore, the species is even more threat of extinction than it would be without having that scientific name on.
SUMMERS: Martin Cheek is a conservation botanist and a senior research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Martin, thank you.
CHEEK: Thank you very much, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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