Stachys Caroliniana: Rare New Species Of Plant:discovered
Sunday, November 23, 2014 - 11:30
in Biology & Nature
Sometimes you don't need to travel to the unexplored corners of the globe to discover a new species of plant. Sometimes they can be really close to home, you just have to spend 40 years of your life looking. University of South Carolina Professor John Nelson and alumnus Douglas Rayner have founds just such a new species close to home and they have dubbed it Stachys caroliniana, a new example of what is commonly called a hedge-nettle or woundwort. And rarity is unusual among S. caroliniana's closest relatives. There are about 300 species in the genus Stachys, according to Nelson, the curator of the University of South Carolina's A.C. Moore Herbarium. He calls it a "cosmopolitan genus." read more