Largest known fossilized flower found preserved in amber

By Pol Allingham via SWNS

The largest-known fossilized flower has been preserved in amber - and scientists say it could be 40 million years old.

New photographs reveal the 28-millimeter-wide bloom is nearly three times the size of other preserved flowers.

It was thought to have fallen from the ancient flowering evergreen Stewartia kowalewskii, grown in the Baltic forests of northern Europe.

Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, and the University of Vienna scientists reanalyzed the exceptionally large flower, first described and named in 1872, by extracting its pollen.

They revealed it is likely to be closely related to the Asian species Symplocos and proposed a new name for the flower, Symplocos kowalewskii.

Writing in Scientific Reports, study authors Dr. Eva-Maria Sadowski and Christa-Charlotte suggested its rare size was caused by a large resin outpouring encasing the flower.

The resin, believed to have been found in open-cast mines of the Samland Peninsular Kaliningrad, Russia, would have prevented organisms from growing on the flower and damaging it.

It has been dated to the Late Eocene, between 38 million and 33.9 million years ago.

Study author Dr. Sadowski said: "This fossil represents the first record of Symplocaceae from Baltic amber.

"The rarity of such large-sized flower inclusions is likely due to the size of the resin outpouring and its properties, which might affect the embedding of plant organs.

"S. kowalewskii was likely a constituent of mixed-angiosperm-conifer forests in the Baltic amber source area and supports its affinities to evergreen broadleaved and mixed mesophytic forests of present-day East and Southeast Asia."