Meet the flower stripped of its native species status

Meet the flower stripped of its native species status

For 170 years, botanists have believed that the rare daisy fleabane (Erigeron conyzoides) is an Australian native flower. First described in 1855, the species is restricted to the alpine areas of NSW and Victoria. But it hasn’t been collected in NSW since 1978, and was recently listed as endangered in Victoria after not being sighted for 13 years. When botanists rediscovered the species last year, genetic testing revealed a surprising taxonomic …