An international team of botanists led by Dr Thomas Couvreur from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Montpellier has described a new genus in the custard apple family Annonaceae.

The new genus was in fact erected to accommodate a new plant species, Sirdavidia solannona, found in Monts de Cristal National Park, Gabon.

The generic name Sirdavidia honors Sir David Attenborough, for his influence on the life and careers of the scientists who discovered it.

“Sir David Attenborough has been such a wonderful and important influence in my life and the life of so many,” said Dr Couvreur, the first author of the paper published online in the journal PhytoKeys.

“”I was really surprised when I realized that no one has named a genus after him before, so I found this discovery an excellent opportunity to honor him with a genus name.”

Co-author Dr Hervé Sauquet from the Université Paris-Sud added: “I show David Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants BBC series every year to my students.”

“This will be a nice story to tell them. David Attenborough‘s legacy is exactly about that: stimulating passion and interest about the natural world around us.”

Sir David was truly thrilled when hearing about this new genus. He said: “I know very well that such a decision is the greatest compliment that a biologist can pay to another and I am truly grateful.”

Sirdavidia solannona is endemic to Gabon, with only three known localities: two near the Kinguele dam in the Monts de Cristal National Park, and one south of the Ivindo National Park.

“This new discovery underlines once again the importance of the Gabonese national parks for conserving the wonderful yet incompletely known biodiversity for the country and Africa,” said co-author Dr Raoul Niangadouma of the Herbier National du Gabon, Libreville.

With its unusual flower structure characterized by red petals contrasting with its bright yellow loosely arranged stamens, the flowers of Sirdavidia solannona did not quite fit any of the previously described genera.

According to the team, its flowers are probably ‘buzz pollinated,’ a very specific type of pollination whereby bees use the vibration of their wings to extract the pollen grains onto their bellies.

“The flowers of Sirdavidia have a striking resemblance with those of the nightshade or Solanaceae family – champions of buzz pollination. This resemblance with Solanaceae inspired the name of the new species.”

“What is really special about this is that buzz pollination is unknown in Magnoliidae and early divergent angiosperms in general, which represent around 10,000 species worldwide,” the scientists said.

“If confirmed by our further studies, this will prove to be another very exciting aspect of this discovery.”

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Couvreur TLP et al. 2015. Sirdavidia, an extraordinary new genus of Annonaceae from Gabon. PhytoKeys 46: 1-19; doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.46.8937