A new genus of rather ugly parasitic plant should finally be named this year, two decades after a lone example was first examined by botanists.

The weird thing, a type of Orobanchaceae, has completely lost its chlorophyll and leaches nutrients and water out of its host tree.

In 1985 a researcher named Wayt Thomas from the New York Botanical Garden first obtained a sample of the plant in Mexico. It remained unidentified until 20 years later when George Yatskievych, of the Missouri Botanical Garden, set out to find it.

“I’ve always been interested in plants that don’t fit the preconceived notion of what

plants should be,” he says (press release pdf). “The specimen collected by Dr Thomas was so unusual that I had to see for myself what it looked like alive.”

So off he set to the Sierra Madre del Sur where he found the species again. Later this year he hopes to published a paper on the plant, officially giving it a new name.

“You can’t call it ugly [sorry George, I think you’ll find I just did], but on the other hand, I recognize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” says Yatskievych (AP). “Beauty is in the beholder’s eye and this plant is wonderful in so many ways.”

Sadly the thing is in trouble already.

“The region where the plant grows is changing rapidly, as the abundant forests gradually are being logged for timber and the slopes burned to become pastures and crop fields,” says Yatskievych. “In another decade or two, we might never have succeeded in relocating this undescribed genus in the field.”

He’s hoping to name it “the little hermit of Mexico” (Eremitilla Mexicana).

There are echoes in this plant’s lifestyle of species such as Orthilia secunda, which steals its goodness from funghi (see recent Nature feature).

Image top: excavated stem of the parasite. Photo by G. Yatskievych / courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden.

Image lower: George Yatskievych studying the parasite in Mexico. Photo by J. L. Contreras J./ courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden.