On a sleepy roadside in rural Western Australia, Katherine Walkerden and Julie Waters stumbled upon a plant unknown to science.
In the spring of 2021, the two members of the Esperance Shire's environmental team were looking for threatened species and sensitive environments in a road reserve, ahead of a plan to widen the thoroughfare, when a strange shrub caught their eye.
It looked like a blueberry, only with slightly flatter fruit.
"I went, 'Oh hang on, I don't know what this one's called,'" Ms Waters said.
They took a sample and tried to study it, before consulting a colleague with 30 years' experience.
Still without answers, they sent it off to the WA Herbarium.
"The relevant expert [Michael Hislop] was extremely excited," Ms Walkerden said.
"[He] believed it was almost certainly a new species."
Mr Hislop was right, although the pair would need to collect about eight more samples over following years to prove it was morphologically distinct.
But the work has finally paid off — Acrotriche platycarpa was described in a journal called Nuytsia at the end of April, with Ms Walkerden, Ms Waters and Mr Hislop listed as authors.
"It was just so exciting," Ms Walkerden said.
"The discovery, being involved in the process, being the second author on the paper describing it, that was really great."
In the past, new species were often named after the people who discovered them, but Ms Waters was pleased to see Acrotriche platycarpa named for its biological traits.
She said platy meant "plate-like' and carpa meant "fruit", signifying its flat berries and making it easier to remember out in the field.
The discovery brings the number of recognised Australian Acrotriche to 19, eight of which are in WA.
'No-one has really looked into it'
Ms Waters said although the new plant is part of the blueberry and cranberry family, she could not say whether it tasted like the well-known fruits.
"I haven't tried it, but I have tried other Acrotriche," she said.
"There's one that grows on the coast that tastes kind of like apples, crunchy apples."
So far, the pair have found about 60 Acrotriche platycarpa plants in rural road reserves.
Ms Waters said although it was a tiny distribution, the plant was not listed as threatened so the area was not protected.
But she believed it would be fairly safe, with neighbours aware of it and the shire no longer planning to widen the road.
"The road reserve where we found is quite an interesting space," she said.
"It's sort of in that interface between two bio-geographic areas, which is probably why you get interesting species there."
Ms Waters believed it probably existed elsewhere.
"There's plenty more suitable habitat out there," she said.
"It's just that no-one's really looked into it that well."
The Esperance Shire is a known biodiversity hotspot, home to more than 3,000 species.
Ms Waters and Ms Walkerden are confident there will be plenty more new finds in the future.
"That's the whole reason I do my job," Ms Waters said.
The WA Herbarium was contacted for the story.
