Once you reach your 50s like me, you find yourself saying the kind of stuff you hated your parents saying when you were a kid. For instance, whenever I see youngsters taking endless selfies for their Instagram, I inwardly tut and think, "How vacuous! How superficial!"
If I'm honest, this is mainly jealousy that I'm no longer young and pretty enough to want to share pictures of my own face. And really, it's not true that sharing pictures online is a waste of time. Sometimes, it can be a positive good for society.
Humans of New York is a great example. And now here's another. One man’s holiday selfie has literally helped science identify a new plant species.
Here's what happened. Back in 2021, plant enthusiast Jeremiah Harris was exploring the flooded forests around Inírida in the Guainía region of Colombia. With the help of local guides, his group found huge floating lily pads that were well over a metre across.
Harris, who runs a carnivorous plant nursery in Colorado Springs and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest Venus flytrap, assumed he was simply looking at Victoria amazonica, the best-known of the giant waterlilies. So he took some photographs, including a few selfies, and shared them on his Instagram.
The image was then spotted by Carlos Magdalena, a waterlily expert at London's famous Kew Gardens – and he immediately sensed something unusual about it. The issue was that no Victoria waterlily had ever been recorded in the Orinoco river basin, where the photo was taken.
Magdalena got in touch with Harris, sparking years of work that began with studying satellite imagery. Eventually, a team including scientists from Bogotá’s botanic garden and members of Indigenous communities set out to search the flooded jungle, but without success.
With just 10 hours to go before their flight home, though, their driver pointed them in the right direction, and they sailed overnight in darkness to reach a small lake where they found the waterlilies Harris had photographed.
The power of a picture
The plant has now been officially identified as a new species, Victoria colombiana in the journal Phytotaxa, with Harris listed as a co-author. The leaves are so big that the plants can be spotted on satellite images from space. It's not all good news, though: the plant is likely to be critically endangered as it's estimated only 30 to 50 exist in the wild, so work is under way to protect it.
For photographers, it’s a great reminder of the power of a picture, even one taken casually. Harris’s selfie wasn’t carefully composed. But it was clear, well located and shared publicly, and that was enough to lead to a major botanical achievement. As one of Harris’s followers commented under his post: “Everyone, more plant selfies!”
