Botanist on quest to identify and name endangered orchids

Deep in the forests of Southeast Asia, Pankaj Kumar kept careful watch over 23 small, wild plants in 2012. He returned to them again and again, waiting for them to bloom. They were orchids, he was certain — but without blooms, their species remained a mystery.

He waited patiently, hoping for the day they would reveal their identity. Days stretched into weeks, then months. Ten months passed before a tiny white petal — smaller than a fingernail — finally revealed itself in August 2013. Kumar, an expert on Asian orchids, was almost certain it was an unidentified species. At the faintest touch, the fragile bloom slipped from its stem. And with it came a heartbreaking realization: to give this orchid a name, he would have to dissect the very flower he waited so long to see.

Though the government gave him permission to collect a sample, he worried the plant would shrivel before he could reach the bottom of the mountain. With a rainstorm moving in, and the water level rising from a nearby stream, he got to work, there on the forest floor. In the pouring rain and with a camera around his neck, he documented as much as he could. Then, preparing for the journey out of the forest, he carefully selected a single specimen to take with him. He kept watch over it for three years before handing it over to a garden for safekeeping. Despite Kumar’s warnings not to touch the plant or uproot it, the handler cut it into three parts. It died. When Kumar found out, it brought the seasoned botanist to tears, knowing the specimen was lost forever. 

A researcher affiliated with FIU and its partner institutions, Kumar has spent 25 years trekking through Asia's deepest forests looking for rare orchids. He has battled illegal collectors and mourned species lost to habitat destruction. In total, he has discovered 38 previously unknown species and has more that he’s currently writing up.

Over the years, his discoveries have spanned much of Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, among other countries. Today, he continues his orchid research in collaboration with Hong Liu, professor in FIU’s Department of Earth and Environment and Jason Downing '11, Ph.D. '16, an orchid biologist at Fairchild Tropical Garden, a partner organization of FIU. Kumar credits his success to a mix of fieldwork in taxonomy - the science of classifying, naming, and describing living organisms based on their shared characteristics - his passion for photography and hiking. He’s even a bit of an artist, having drawn the illustrations for almost all his orchid discoveries.

The work is often a mix of heartbreak and joy. In Laos, for example, he identified a new species in 2013. That orchid was declared extinct just two years later after lime mining destroyed its only known mountain habitat. The plant has not been reported anywhere else in the world.

Kumar partnered with the government in Laos to establish a greenhouse for orchid conservation and cultivation. During his time there, Kumar and his colleagues added 50 new orchid records.

“You need to conserve the habitat first, if you want to conserve the plant,” Kumar said. “But it’s not so easy in some countries, because they don’t have other options to bring economy to the country.”

One small orchid he identified was thought to be extinct after years of illegal collection. Kumar explains that locals often harvest these orchids from the wild for personal gardens, though they rarely survive. Collectors repeatedly return to the forest, depleting populations. In one case, Kumar recognized a new species after his friend showed him a photo of an orchid purchased in Laos from a local nursery. Eventually, the orchid disappeared from the wild, and Kumar feared it had vanished forever. To his relief, the species was later discovered in Vietnam. Yet, the threat persists, and the plant is still being trafficked illegally, sometimes selling in the United States for as much as $200.

During his time in Southeast Asia, he would hike the forest twice a week and helped discover 14 new orchid species.

“Each new species is unique, and it gives me a kind of happiness that I helped — I contributed to science in some way,” he said.

A special discovery for Kumar was one he found in India and named after his father — Peristylus sahanii (sahani being his father’s surname). Nearly two decades after discovering his first orchid species in India, a friend sent him a photo last month, which he immediately recognized as the same flower he had dedicated to his father. He was overjoyed to see it was still thriving.

His plant names don’t always have personal touches like the one he attributed to his dad. Sometimes he uses personal connections and inspiration, other times he goes by plant characteristics. One of his discoveries was named after his Ph. D. supervisor in India and another — “Black Crown Thismia” — for its resemblance to a black crown. He notes that it’s important to identify new orchid species for conservation purposes citing a proverb that says, “You cannot protect something which you do not know.” His efforts have not gone unnoticed. An orchid native to Vietnam is actually named after him as an honorary nod from Russian and Vietnamese scientists who discovered the flower.

Kumar, who struggled to find mentorship in his own studies, is committed to guiding the next generation of botanists. 

“If someone is trying to conserve a plant, I’m going to help them,” Kumar said. “Because that’s a need of the time. Many species are going extinct before they’re even identified. We need these people.”

His passion for botany bloomed early.  In college, his rooftop garden in India held around 500 plants — so many there was barely space to walk. Though his father, a retired mechanical engineer, wanted him to study medicine, Kumar was set on a career in botany. At India’s Gossner College, he earned a bachelor of science in botany with zoology and geology to become the only student in the program with that rare combination. He went on to earn a master’s degree at Ranchi University, specializing in cytogenetics, radiation genetics and plant breeding, before focusing on orchids during his Ph.D. at Forest Research Institute in Jharkhand.

Kumar now mentors students through his work with the Botanical Society of America, which promotes educating middle school and high school students, as well as everyone else, about plants. By guiding the next generation of botanists he hopes to inspire young minds to look closer and carry forward the work of protecting fragile ecosystems.

“I like to train the next generation,” Kumar said. “Taxonomists themselves” – individuals like him, who are dedicated to collecting and analyzing specimens in support of worldwide research “are becoming endangered, and they are an essential part of conservation.”