
While walking in Big Bend National Park in Texas' Chihuahuan Desert, a park volunteer came across a fuzzy flower that turned out to be a never-before-seen species. The "woolly devil," as researchers have named it, is in the sunflower family and also represents a new genus.
This is the first time in nearly 50 years that a new plant genus has been described in a U.S. national park, since the discovery of the July gold shrub (Dedeckera eurekensis) in Death Valley National Park in 1976, according to a statement from the California Academy of Sciences.