London: Some green-fingered thieves have stolen one of the few surviving examples of the world's smallest water lily from the Royal Botanic Gardens here.
The critically endangered Nymphaea thermarum, also known as the pygmy Rwandan water lily, was stolen from a conservatory, where it was on public display, at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in west London.
The thieves pulled or dug up the water lily from a shallow pond in the aquatic zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory at the heart of the centre last Thursday morning, 'The Telegraph' reported.
The tiny flower, which measures less than a centimetre across, died out in its natural habitat in southwest Rwanda six years ago. The plant is now extinct in the wild and around 50 samples at Kew are some of the few known to exist. The only others are in the Bonn Botanic Gardens in Germany.
The white and yellow flowers need very precise temperatures as well as exact oxygen and carbon dioxide levels to flourish and it is feared the stolen plant will soon die without the correct expertise, the report said.
"Our staff are dedicated to the conservation of plants and when incidents of this nature occur it is a blow to morale," said Richard Barley, Director of Horticulture at Kew Gardens. "We take theft of our invaluable scientific collection of plants very seriously and this matter is with the Metropolitan Police," he said.
