Meet Thismia daemona: The Devil Flower That Gave Up on Sunlight
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Original Research: Thismia daemona (Thismiaceae), a new species from Thailand supported by morphological and molecular evidence
Imagine walking through a forest looking for orchids, pushing through vegetation and scanning the plants around you, when something strange catches your eye beneath the leaf litter. It is tiny, dark and unlike the greenery surrounding it. Its flower is almost black, reddish-orange tissue provides flashes of color, and three long appendages rise from the top like miniature horns. It looks more like a creature designed for a fantasy movie than a flowering plant. Yet that is essentially how scientists encountered a species that had never been formally described before. Meet Thismia daemona, a newly described flowering plant from Thailand that has appropriately earned the nickname “devil flower.” Its appearance is spectacular, but what makes this plant truly fascinating is what is happening underneath the forest floor.
An Accidental Discovery
The story began in May 2025 in Thong Pha Phum National Park, located in Kanchanaburi Province in western Thailand. According to an account from Prince of Songkla University, graduate student Neeranuch Taosiri of Chulalongkorn University encountered the unusual plant while surveying orchids in the forest. Photographs were eventually shared with botanists, including researchers with expertise in Thismia, and its unusual characteristics immediately attracted attention. The researchers subsequently investigated the population and collected material necessary to determine exactly what they had found. The specimens were growing beneath the forest canopy among fallen leaves and small bamboo at elevations around 930–970 meters, or roughly 3,000 feet above sea level. That location itself was interesting because members of Thismia are often associated with extremely humid forest environments, while this population occurred in a seasonal lower-montane forest. The discovery suggested that members of this strange group of plants may occupy a broader range of habitats than previously recognized.
Finding the plant was only the beginning. Discovering something that looks unusual does not automatically make it a new species, so researchers had to demonstrate that it was genuinely different from previously described Thismia. They examined fresh and preserved specimens under a stereo microscope and documented the plant with detailed photography. They studied its roots, flower structure, reproductive anatomy and other morphological characteristics. The researchers then added genetic evidence, analyzing three nuclear DNA markers—SSU, ITS and LSU—and two mitochondrial markers, atpA and matR. Those genetic comparisons supported the conclusion suggested by the plant's unusual anatomy: this was indeed a distinct species. The team formally described Thismia daemona in the journal PhytoKeys in August 2026.
Why Does the Devil Flower Look Like THAT?
If scientists were trying to give this plant a memorable introduction to humanity, the flower did most of the work for them. Thismia daemona produces a predominantly blackish flower accented by fleshy reddish-orange structures. Three slender, club-shaped appendages extend upward from a dome-like structure called a mitre, creating the horned appearance responsible for much of its devilish reputation. Inside, things somehow get even stranger. Researchers documented translucent blue stamens, along with tiny translucent white hairs covering portions of the flower's internal surface. Below ground are pale-brown, hairy roots with a branching, coral-like appearance. The entire plant, including its flower, can reach approximately 12.5 centimeters, or about five inches, in height.
Those characteristics inspired the species name daemona. The researchers explained that its dark coloration, horn-like appendages and secretive lifestyle reminded them of something demonic. It is an unusually appropriate name because the plant does not simply look like something that prefers darkness. Much of its existence actually occurs hidden beneath leaf litter and close to or below the forest floor. It emerges above ground primarily when it is time to flower and produce fruit. That secretive lifestyle is also one reason plants like this can be incredibly difficult to locate. You could potentially walk through suitable habitat without realizing that a remarkable flowering plant is sitting just centimeters away.
A Plant That Doesn't Photosynthesize
The most surprising feature of Thismia daemona has nothing to do with its horns. It does not photosynthesize. We are taught early that plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to manufacture sugars through photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is the pigment responsible for capturing light energy and is also responsible for the familiar green color of most plants. But T. daemona is achlorophyllous, meaning it lacks chlorophyll. Without chlorophyll, it cannot obtain its carbon through ordinary photosynthesis. Instead of operating its own solar-powered kitchen, this plant has evolved an entirely different strategy.
Thismia daemona is what scientists call a fully mycoheterotrophic plant. “Myco” refers to fungi, while heterotrophy refers to obtaining organic carbon rather than producing it from inorganic carbon through photosynthesis. The plant obtains resources through its association with fungi underground. This relationship is why the plant's roots and its microscopic interactions beneath the soil are just as important as the bizarre flower we can see above it. Rather than reaching toward sunlight, its survival is intimately connected to organisms living in darkness beneath the forest floor. That evolutionary strategy allows Thismia species to occupy deeply shaded habitats where sunlight can be extremely limited.
And yes, this means the relationship can reasonably be described as parasitic from the plant's side, although “mycoheterotrophic” is the more precise biological description of its nutritional strategy. In the familiar mycorrhizal partnerships involving many green plants, fungi can provide plants with nutrients and water while receiving photosynthetically produced carbon in return. A fully mycoheterotrophic plant has no photosynthesis-derived carbon to offer in that exchange. Instead, it obtains carbon through the fungal relationship. This is why mycoheterotrophic plants have sometimes been discussed as evolutionary “cheaters” of plant-fungal relationships. T. daemona may look like a fungus and depend upon fungi, but it remains genetically and reproductively a flowering plant.
So Why Isn't It a Fungus?
That became one of the most common questions after I covered this species for Nature Is Lit, and it is a good one. If something lives around fungi, does not photosynthesize and spends much of its life hidden around the forest floor, calling it a fungus might seem reasonable. But photosynthesis alone does not determine whether an organism belongs to the plant kingdom. Thismia daemona belongs to a lineage of flowering plants, or angiosperms. It produces flowers, pollen, ovules, fruits and seeds—the reproductive machinery of a flowering plant. Fungi follow an entirely different evolutionary lineage and typically reproduce through spores rather than flowers and seeds.
Their cells also reveal fundamental differences. Plant cell walls primarily contain cellulose, whereas fungal cell walls characteristically contain chitin. Fungi commonly grow through networks of threadlike structures called hyphae, which together form a mycelium. Thismia, despite its extremely modified appearance and lifestyle, retains the structures and developmental characteristics of its flowering-plant ancestry. Genetic analysis provides even stronger evidence because scientists can compare its DNA with that of related organisms. The molecular analysis of T. daemona placed it firmly among other members of Thismia. Evolution has dramatically modified this plant, but it did not transform a plant into a fungus.
A New Branch on the Thismia Family Tree
The genus Thismia contains roughly 120 currently recognized species, many of which are sometimes collectively called fairy lanterns because of their tiny and unusual flowers. T. daemona belongs to a smaller group within the genus known as Thismia section Geomitra. Before this discovery, members of Geomitra were known from Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra. Finding one in western Thailand therefore pushed the group's known geographic distribution farther north. The discovery also increased the number of recognized Thismia species in Thailand from 15 to 16.
Genetic analyses indicate that T. daemona's closest known relative is Thismia betung-kerihunensis from Borneo. Morphologically, researchers also compared the new species with similar members of its group, carefully documenting features that distinguish it from its relatives. Details such as the coloration and texture of the outer tepals, structures inside the floral tube, the shape of the mitre and the unusual translucent-blue stamens helped establish its distinct identity. These details may sound incredibly specific, but this is exactly how taxonomy works. Declaring a new species requires much more than saying, “This one looks weird.” Scientists must demonstrate how its anatomy and, increasingly, its DNA distinguish it from organisms already known to science.
Discovered—and Already in Trouble
Perhaps the most sobering part of this discovery is just how rare Thismia daemona appears to be. Researchers currently know of only one population containing fewer than 50 individuals. The known population occupies an extremely small area, reported as less than 0.05 square kilometers. Based on the available evidence and IUCN criteria, the researchers assessed the species as Critically Endangered in their paper. Importantly, that is a scientific assessment presented by the researchers and does not mean the species has already received a formal Critically Endangered listing on the IUCN Red List.
There is an additional irony here: the known population occurs inside a protected national park. Protection certainly matters, but a national-park boundary cannot eliminate every threat facing a species this specialized. The site receives visitors, and a plant only a few inches tall hiding among fallen leaves would be remarkably easy to step on without ever realizing it was there. Disturbing the surrounding leaf litter and soil could also matter because the plant's survival is connected to its underground fungal partners and the broader forest microhabitat. Conservation therefore means protecting more than the visible flower. It means protecting the tiny ecological network that allows the flower to exist at all.
What Else Is Beneath Our Feet?
There is something wonderful about the fact that Thismia daemona was not discovered on an unexplored island or during an expedition into some mythical forest untouched by humans. It was found inside an established national park. People visit this landscape. Scientists have worked in Thailand's forests for generations. Yet beneath ordinary-looking leaf litter was a flowering plant that science had never formally described. Its discovery is a reminder that biodiversity is not simply a catalog we completed centuries ago. New species continue to be documented, sometimes in places people already know.
And Thismia daemona represents more than another name added to a botanical database. This five-inch plant tells an evolutionary story about what happens when a lineage abandons one of the characteristics we most strongly associate with plants: photosynthesis. It shows us a flowering plant that has become completely dependent on relationships beneath the soil, spends most of its existence hidden from us and surfaces wearing what can only be described as nature's goth formalwear. At the same time, fewer than 50 individuals are currently known, meaning scientists began thinking about its conservation almost immediately after introducing it to the world.
There is something beautifully humbling about that.
We often imagine discovering nature by looking toward enormous animals, towering trees or spectacular landscapes. Sometimes discovery requires looking in exactly the opposite direction.
Down.
Under the leaves.
At a tiny black flower that spent who knows how long quietly breaking our elementary-school definition of what a plant is.
And if a devil-horned, fungus-dependent, non-photosynthesizing flowering plant can remain hidden in a visited national park until 2025, imagine what else is still waiting beneath our feet.
Nature is lit.
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