In what botanists hail as a surprise discovery, a member of the rose family long thought to be a single rare species has been found to have a living relative.
For more than 100 years, botanists believed that there was only one species in the genus Neviusia: the snow wreath, found in the Southeast. But they have now identified a second member of the genus, the Shasta snow wreath, in Northern California.Dr. Dean Taylor and Glenn Clifton made the discovery last May near Redding, Calif., and describe it in the journal Novon, published by the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.
"It's like a meteorite falling out of the sky," Taylor said.
He and Clifton, who are consultants at Biosystems Analysis Inc., an environmental consulting concern in Santa Cruz, Calif., found the Shasta snow wreath, or Neviusia cliftonii, on a limestone deposit in a canyon off Highway 299 in California.
Named after Shasta Lake, the thin shrub grows 6 to 8 feet tall and has oval, toothed leaves and wiry, arching reddish stems. Taylor and Clifton later found the shrub in two nearby locations, all within 15 miles. It is distinguished from the other species by, among other things, the presence of small white petals, absent in the southeastern flower.
The finding is further evidence that members of the genus probably were once widespread across the United States and Asia, where similar species grow, said Marshall R. Crosby, Novon's editor.
In the past 22 years, nine new rose species have been found in California, and only a handful in the rest of the country, Taylor said.
The discovery challenges the notion that the cataloging of species in California is complete, said Dr. Barbara Ertter, a specialist in certain members of the rose family.