Amazon forest trees have longer leaves than adults

Coccoloba gigantifolia grows 15 meters tall, has 2.5 meter long leaves, most likely the largest leafy species of the dicotyledonous plants.

A team of botanists at the Amazon Research Institute (INPA) in Manaus discovered a new plant in the Coccoloba genus in the American rainforest. They first encountered Coccoloba trees in 1982 while surveying the Madeira River basin. They later found more individuals on expeditions in the 1980s but could not identify the species.

Coccoloba leaf gigantifolia.(Photo: Mongabay).

The tree is found without flowers or fruits. Their leaves are too large to dry, pressed or brought back to INPA. The team was forced to take notes and take photographs as documentation. In 1993, botanists collected two large leaves from an individual tree in Rondônia state for framing at INPA. However, due to the lack of a reproductive unit, Rogério Gribel, an INPA researcher, and his colleagues could not describe it as a new species.

In 2005, Gribel and his colleague Carlos Alberto Cid Ferreira gathered some seeds from an individual tree in Jamari National Forest. They planted the seed in the courtyard and it took 13 years to get results. In 2018, one of the plant samples grew and blossomed, providing the necessary data for researchers. Gribel and his colleagues named it Coccoloba gigantifolia based on its huge leaf size in research published in the journal Acta Amazonica.

According to them, C. gigantifolia is rare and at high risk of extinction. These individuals were only recorded from the Madeira river basin of Amazonas and Rondônia states, which are affected by infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric dam construction, road construction and agricultural expansion. Due to these risks, the study team recommends that C. gigantifolia be listed as endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List (IUCN).