Photo by Andreas Kay licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Describing plants can be quite a task for taxonomists. When a new species is discovered, the honor of naming it often goes to the discoverer. At the very least, they have some input. Some folks go for the more traditional rout and give the plant a descriptive name rooted in either Latin or Greek. Others decide to name the plant in honor of a botanist of the past or perhaps a loved one. Still others take a stranger approach in order to immortalize a famous celebrity. However, in doing so they risk taking something away from the species in question.
Instead of a descriptive name that clues you in on specific features of the plant, instead you hit an etymological dead end in which you are stuck with nothing more than a last name. This became quite apparent to University of Alabama botanist John Clark when it was time to name a newly discovered plant species from South America.
Had things been slightly different, the recently discovered Kohleria hypertrichosa would have been named after Chewbacca. One look at the flowers of this species and you can understand why. The long tubular petals of this gesneriad are covered in dense, fuzzy hair. This is unlike any other plant known to science. The appearance of these odd fuzz balls may seem puzzling at first but considering where this plant was found growing, it quickly becomes apparent that these flowers are a marvelous adaptation in response to climate.
Kohleria hypertrichosa is only known to grow in a very narrow swath of mountainous cloud forest in the Ecuadorian Andes. At home between elevations of 3,600 and 6,600 feet above sea level, this wonderful gesneriad experiences some pretty low temperatures for a tropical region. It is likely that the thick layer of hairs keeps the flowers a bit warmer than the surrounding air, offering a welcoming microclimate for pollinators. This could potentially make them much more likely to be pollinated in a habitat where pollinators may be in short supply.
At the end of the day, Clark decided to stick with a more traditional name for this new species. Its scientific name is no less interesting as a result. The specific epithet 'hypertrichosa' is derived from a condition in humans known as hypertrichosis, or werewolf syndrome, in which a person grows excessive amounts of body hair.
Photo Credit: Andreas Kay [1]