AUSTIN (KXAN) – Texas is big — so big, it seems, that there are still things to be discovered in the state.
Staffers at Big Bend National Park, located in Western Texas, found that to be true after discovering a new plant species “previously unknown to science,” the National Park Service confirmed Monday.
Last March, a Big Bend National Park botany program volunteer and a supervisory interpretive park ranger found some small plants growing among the desert rocks within a northern portion of the park. They noted the plant’s “fuzzy foliage and interesting flower” that didn’t resemble plants they’d seen previously.
Working with experts, species databases, herbarium records, and plant taxonomy publications, officials confirmed this plant’s existence hadn’t previously been documented.
Park staff joined the California Academy of Sciences, Sul Ross University, and Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación para el Desarrollo Integral Regional to study the plant, determining via genetic analysis it was a new genus within the daisy family.
The plant’s name, Ovicula biradiata, pays tribute to its fuzzy exterior. Ovicula means “tiny sheep” — apropos for the white “wool” coating the plant’s leaves, the National Park Service added. “Biradiata” refers to the two ray petals found in each of the flowers.
While its government name might be Ovicula biradiata, researchers gave it a more casual nickname: “wooly devil.”
There is much still unknown about the wooly devil, park superintendent Anjna O’Connor said in a press release. That includes whether there are more in Big Bend and what its life cycle entails.
This isn’t the only scientific discovery to recently emerge at Big Bend National Park. Newer revelations include a fossil record of a new species of duck-billed dinosaur along with the detection of a species of oak researchers previously thought was extinct.