2026年7月9日、158年間見つからなかった紫の花が、標高3600メートルで再び咲いていたJuly 9, 2026 — A purple flower unseen for 158 years was blooming again at 3,600 meters

A research team from the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) — Sudhansu Sekhar Dash, Subhajit Lahiri, and Monalisa Das — rediscovered Cyananthus hookeri, an alpine flowering plant whose presence in India had gone unrecorded since 1867, during a high-altitude survey in Tawang district, Arunachal Pradesh. The plant was found in the Chuna Valley near Mago village, at an altitude of roughly 3,600 meters. The team counted fewer than 50 mature plants, all confined to a highly restricted alpine habitat. The species was first collected in India by British botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker during his Himalayan expeditions in Sikkim in 1867 — meaning this find ends a 158-year gap in its recorded presence in the country. The findings were published in the international conservation journal Oryx.