Victoria colombiana

‘A new paper published today in the journal Phytotaxa unveils a new species in the genus Victoria, the Colombian giant waterlily (Victoria colombiana). With only three other known species in the genus, V. colombiana joins the pantheon of nature’s giants with pads measuring up to 2 metres across…

Carlos Magdalena, Botanical and Scientific Research Horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was first made aware of the waterlily on Instagram five years ago when he spotted it in photos taken in Colombia’s Inírida region by  Jeremiah Harris. Harris, who runs a carnivorous plant nursery in the US, was not aware at the time of the significance of his snapshot, mistakenly identifying the new species for the more common V. amazonica…

Carlos Magdalena with Victoria colombiana water lily pad. © Mauricio Bernal

… However, Magdalena, a world-renowned waterlily expert, immediately suspected something wasn’t quite right as the natural range of known Victoria waterlilies does not extend to the Inírida River, in Guainía, Colombia, which is in the head water drainage of the Orinoco River, South America’s third longest river and one of its most important waterways. This prompted him to speculate it could be a new species.

To confirm his suspicions, Magdalena scanned the Inírida and its many surrounding lakes using satellite imagery until he saw several Victoria pads from a single plant plainly visible in the satellite imagery, verifying that Victorias were indeed present there. Harris confirmed that the plants seen in the online maps where the same that were shown to him by the local guides’. © RBG Kew 2026 Read more…