It all started with a photo taken by a tourist in Monchique. After spotting the small yellow flower, she took a picture with her phone and later shared it on iNaturalist, a platform used to record plants and wildlife.

The photograph later caught the attention of botanist João Farminhão, a researcher at the University of Coimbra, who realised there was something unusual about the plant.

A year later, he travelled to Cerro do Castelo de Alferce in Monchique to find it for himself.

There, researchers discovered a small population of the plant and began investigating whether it could be a species that had not previously been identified.

Their suspicions were eventually confirmed, and the plant has now been officially described as a new species.

It has been named Linaria alfercensis, or ansarina-de-alferce in Portuguese, after Alferce, the parish where it was first identified.

The small annual plant produces yellow flowers with distinctive brown markings and usually flowers between March and May.

Its home is also particularly specific. The plant is mainly found in annual grasslands and clearings on soils associated with nepheline syenite, a type of rock that is rare worldwide.

So far, its known distribution is extremely limited, with most plants found on the southern slopes of Serra da Picota in the Monchique area.

The discovery was made by a team of Portuguese and Spanish researchers led by Farminhão and involving researchers from the universities of Coimbra, Lisbon and Barcelona, as well as the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid.

The findings have now been published in the scientific journal Plant Ecology and Evolution.

However, discovering the plant has also highlighted the need to protect it.

Only a few dozen flowering plants are currently known, and researchers consider the species threatened by habitat loss and degradation, forestry activity and invasive plants, particularly mimosa. Tourism development in some areas of Serra da Picota has also been identified as a possible threat.

Monchique Council has already started conservation measures in the area where the main population grows.

Beyond adding another species to Portugal's known flora, the discovery also shows how an ordinary photograph can play a role in scientific research.

Platforms such as iNaturalist allow anyone to upload photographs and locations of plants and animals they encounter. In this case, one of those observations eventually led researchers to a species that had been growing in the Algarve without ever being formally described by science.

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