A Maine treasure hunter said Wednesday he has discovered the wreck of a British merchant ship torpedoed off the Massachusetts coast by a German U-boat while carrying what he claims was one of the richest cargos ever.

Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research in Gorham, Maine, said he has found the British steamer Port Nicholson, sunk in 1942 and now sitting in 700 feet of water 50 miles off the US coast.

Brooks claims the vessel, hit by two torpedoes from the U-87, carried a load of platinum bars now worth more than $3 billion.

However, an attorney for the British government expressed doubt the vessel was carrying platinum. And if it was, in fact, laden with precious metals, who owns the hoard could become a matter of international dispute, according to ABC News.

The Port Nicholson was reportedly carrying more than 70 tons in platinum bars, payment to the US from the Soviets for the war effort, according to the New York Daily News.

Platinum is currently selling for around $1,600 an ounce.

Brooks said he and his crew identified the Port Nicholson by its hull number using an underwater camera. He hopes to begin raising the treasure later this month or in early March with the help of a remotely operated underwater vessel.

“I’m going to get it, one way or another, even if I have to lift the ship out of the water,” he said.

The claim should be viewed with skepticism, said Robert F. Marx, an underwater archaeologist, maritime historian and owner of Seven Seas Search and Salvage LLC in Florida, ABC News wrote on its website.

“Both an American company and an English company previously went after the contents of the ship years ago and surely retrieved at least a portion,” Marx told ABC News. “The question is how much, if any, platinum is left,” he said.

Brooks said the Port Nicholson was headed for New York with 71 tons of platinum valued at the time at about $53 million when it was sunk in an attack that left six people dead. The vessel was also carrying gold bullion and diamonds, he said.

Brooks said he located the wreck in 2008 using shipboard sonar. He held off announcing the find while he and his business partners obtained salvage rights from a federal judge.

Britain will wait until salvage operations begin before deciding whether to file a claim on the cargo, said Anthony Shusta, an attorney in Tampa, Fla., who represents the British government. He said it is unclear if the ship was even carrying any platinum.

“We’re still researching what was on the vessel,” he said. “Our initial research indicated it was mostly machinery and military stores.”

A US Treasury Department ledger shows that the platinum bars were on board, Brooks said, and his underwater video footage shows a platinum bar surrounded by 30 boxes that he believes hold four to five platinum ingots each.

But he has yet to bring up any platinum, saying his underwater vessel needs to retrofitted to attach lines to the boxes, which would then be hoisted to the surface by winch.

(Above: The British steam merchant Port Nicholson. Photo from uboat.net.)

It’s unclear how much credence to give talk that certain well-connected South Carolina lobbyists with ties to the groundhog industry have convinced a powerful state Senator to push forward with a bill that would give the Palmetto State its very own Punxsutawney Phil.

Under the rumored proposal, a massive 12,500-acre groundhog preserve would be set up in the Pee Dee region of the state – home of said state Senator – and each Feb. 2 South Carolina would hold a ceremony of its own in which a groundhog would emerge from its home and predict the coming of spring.

Discussions have already progressed to the point that a name has been devised for the South Carolina groundhog, with the moniker “Carbuncle Cal” being bandied about, and it’s said preliminary plans have been drawn up for the preserve, which would hold up to 1,500 groundhogs.

These groundhogs would not only be available to take Carbuncle Cal’s place should he die, but would be bred and the offspring distributed to communities throughout the state, enabling towns across South Carolina to hold separate Groundhog Days of their own, with the potential to turn Feb. 2 into the state’s most lucrative holiday.

The idea is to have aficionados of Marmota monax come from around the globe to the Palmetto State to witness the spectacle, said a legislator who requested anonymity.

“This is economic development at its most sublime,” he said. “Imagine what it will mean for South Carolina if we can get tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people to travel to our state to witness the majesty and grandeur that is Groundhog Day.

Punxsutawney Phil has been a mainstay of western Pennsylvania weather prognostication since the 1880s. According to the tradition, if Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, six more weeks of winter are in store. If Phil does not see his shadow, an early spring is en route.

Given that Phil has been correct just 39 percent of the time since records began being kept in 1887, some in South Carolina feel the Keystone State groundhog is no longer up to the task.

When asked how much state money would be needed to make South Carolina’s dreams of creating a groundhog enclave a reality, another lawmaker said he anticipates submitting a request for at least $7.5 million, in order to build not only a terrorist-proof home for Carbuncle Cal, but also a state-of-the-art breeding facility and hire a staff of at least 25.

South Carolina has been on the groundhog industry’s radar for years, thanks to the state’s willingness to throw away taxpayer dollars on far-fetched economic development schemes such as this, this and this.

“Convincing legislators that South Carolina needs this will be as easy as sliding off a greasy log backward,” said one lobbyist, believed to be heavily tied to the groundhog-breeding industry. “If there’s one thing South Carolina lawmakers go for hook, line and sinker, it’s harebrained economic development schemes. It didn’t take us long to cook up a ruse once we came up with the concept.”

When asked if he had concerns that state lawmakers might not bite on a plan to distribute the rodents statewide and have groundhog days across South Carolina, thereby possibly forcing communities to compete against each other for tourists, the lobbyist said he already devised a plan to offset that worry.

“What I’m thinking about to remedy any issues over competition is spreading Groundhog Day over a week or 10 days,” he said. “We’d begin by having the smallest communities in one region of the state – say the Lowcountry – hold their Groundhog Day on one day, followed by the smallest communities in another region the next day, and so on. Then, we’d move to the larger towns in each region, and finally we’d cap it off with Carbuncle Cal coming out of his hole on Feb. 2 at the Groundhog Compound.”

College basketball has its March Madness; think of this as the “Winter Wingding” for rodent lovers, said a member of the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

“Just imagine what a tourist destination South Carolina would become for lovers of groundhogs, woodchucks, whistle-pigs and any other lowland rodent you can think of,” he added. “Carbuncle Cal could be the beginning of a modern-day gold rush for South Carolina!”

One of the best-known works of the Dutch Golden Age is returning to the United States for the first time in nearly two decades.

Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece Girl with a Pearl Earring will be touring museums in Atlanta, San Francisco and New York next year.

The exhibition, titled “Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis,” features 35 paintings by Dutch Golden Age masters, including Vermeer, Rembrandt, Jan Steen and Frans Hals.

The exhibition will take place while the museum that holds the works – the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague – undergoes a major two-year renovation and expansion.

The collection will move to the Gemeentemuseum, also in The Hague, from April 28-May 28, 2012, and then a portion of it, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, will begin a world tour.

Other works included in the traveling exhibition include The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, Steen’s The Way You Hear It Is the Way You Sing It and Jacob van Ruisdael’s View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds.

The 35 masterpieces will first go to Japan, from July until mid-September 2012 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, then move on to Kobe’s City Art Museum until January 2013.

The first US stop will be the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from Jan. 26-June 2, 2013.

Then the collection moves to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, which will host the exhibition from June 22-Sept. 29, 2013, marking the first time Girl with a Pearl Earring has ever been seen in the southeast United States.

The last stop on the US itinerary is The Frick Collection in New York City from Oct. 22, 2013-Jan. 12, 2014.

Afterward, the works return to the Netherlands where they will be back on display at the newly expanded and renovated Mauritshuis by the middle of 2014.

The last time the Girl with a Pearl Earring was the in US was in 1995, when it was on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, along with all 20 other known paintings by Vermeer, representing more than half his known works.

The south English county of Dorset is noted for being home to Thomas Hardy, the famed writer who used bucolic descriptions of the region in many of his novels, including Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Return of the Native.

It’s also the site of a mass burial ground for dozens of Viking mercenaries, decapitated en masse and placed in shallow graves a millennia ago.

The burial site features the bodies of 54 men who were decapitated and their heads piled to one side. It was discovered in 2009.

Carbon dating and isotope tests revealed the bodies were Scandinavian and dated from the 11th century, according to the BBC.

This coincides with the period in which Vikings were constantly attacking Anglo-Saxons on the English south coast. It is believed the men were captured during an attempted raid into the area.

The skeletons are all of males, with almost all aged from their late teens to around 25 years old, with a handful of older individuals.

Evidence shows they were killed at the same time with a large, very sharp weapon such as a sword.

Indicative of the dangers of medieval warfare, it appears they were not cleanly killed, as many suffered multiple blows to the vertebrae, jawbones and skulls, according to the BBC.

They had no obvious battle wounds and were most likely captives. More bodies than heads were recovered, suggesting that a couple of the heads – possibly that of high-ranking individuals – were put on stakes to warn future invaders.

Britt Baillie, a University of Cambridge professor, said she believes the killings could have taken place during the reign of Aethelred the Unready (whose appellation would indicate the lack of a competent palace public relations staff).

Following a series of Viking attacks, the English monarch ordered all Danish men in England to be killed on Nov. 13, 1002, the feast day of St. Brice.

The killings became known as the St Brice’s Day massacre.

Dorset wasn’t the only place Vikings were put to the sword.

Remains have been found in Oxford and it is thought that massacres also took place in London, Bristol and Gloucester, according to the BBC.

However, Baillie said in some respects the killings at Ridgeway Hill were unique.

“Unlike the frenzied mob attack that took place at Oxford, all the men were murdered methodically and beheaded in an unusual fashion from the front,” according to the BBC.

The Cambridge academic said she believed the skeletons belonged to a group of Viking killers who modeled themselves on a legendary group of mercenaries.

They were the Jomsvikings, founded by Harald Bluetooth and based at Jomsborg on the Baltic coast.

The Jomsvikings became known throughout the medieval world for their strict military codes, which included not showing fear and never running away in the face of the enemy unless completely outnumbered.

This could have led to the men being beheaded from the front, rather than being killed as they tried to escape.

(Above: A researcher sifts through the Viking bones found at the Ridgeway Hill site in Dorset, England, in 2009.)

A cohort at the S.C. Policy Council recently detailed one the most egregious examples of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do that I’ve seen in a long, long while.

Rick Brundrett highlighted the fact that while South Carolina state law required state agencies to have filed their proposed budgets for the upcoming fiscal year by last Nov. 1, the state’s General Assembly apparently doesn’t feel itself beholden to that statute.

In fact, both the S.C. House and S.C. Senate routinely unveil their proposed budgets months after other state agencies have done so, according to Brundrett’s story in The Nerve.

Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley, a state lawmaker on the House’s budget-writing committee, even acknowledged that the normal budget-hearing process traditionally hasn’t been applied to House or Senate chamber budgets.

What that means is legislative leaders can add in large budget increases for their respective chambers much later, typically at the very end of the legislative session, when the media and public are focused on the budget as a whole, rather than individual aspects.

Brundrett pointed out that the House quietly slipped in a $2.3 million increase for itself for this fiscal year on the last day for regular legislative business last June.

And the year before the Senate gave itself a hike of nearly $5 million, a boost which wasn’t first publicly proposed until more than three months after the General Assembly was in session.

One thing to be said for lawmakers – they’re relatively honest in their duplicity.

Merrill said his subcommittee doesn’t plan on holding any formal hearings on the chambers’ proposed budgets, as is typically done with other state agencies, Brundrett reported.

“It’s probably a little less formal than some of the other agencies,” Merrill said. “Generally, they (the Senate) will give us their budget, and we will give them ours. We generally don’t tamper with each other’s budgets.”

Wouldn’t every state agency like to have this kind of carte blanche? You submit your proposed budget to someone, they submit theirs to you, you both wink and everything’s approved. Nice arrangement.

This lack of accountability is particularly reprehensible given that, despite the state’s budget woes of the past few years, the House and Senate have carried over millions in unspent tax dollars annually in recent years, authorized through little-known state budget provisos passed by lawmakers.

The House, for example, carried over $5.8 million into this fiscal year; the Senate carried over $4 million, Office of State Budget records show.

Those amounts represent more than 30 percent of this fiscal year’s general fund appropriations of approximately $18.7 million for the House and $12.4 million for the Senate.

When those amounts are combined with general and “supplemental” appropriations, the House will have nearly $24.6 million to spend this year, according to Office of State Budget records. The Senate’s available funds total about $16.6 million.

“To put how much tax dollars flow through House and Senate chambers into some perspective, the collective $31 million in general appropriations for the Legislature this fiscal year is larger than the total ratified budgets of at least 50 state agencies or divisions, OSB records show,” Brundrett reported.

Finally, the House and Senate looks like it’s a pretty good gig if you can land a job in either chamber. As of August, 89 staffers in both chambers earned at least $50,000 annually, with the top salaries reaching more than $140,000, according to a state salary database.

They’re not only gathering to scrap away decades of rust and soot in an effort to restore the a handful of the nation’s old steam engines to their former glory, but often pay for the privilege, adopting the locomotives, some of which date back to the 1890s.

“This steam train symbolizes liberty,” Janusz Boratynski, an immunology professor in his 60s, told Agence France-Presse. “When I was little, it transported me from my city of Wroclaw, ruined by the war and teeming with rats, to a holiday spot on the other side of the country.”

Boratynski jumped at the chance to adopt one of the engines in particular: the Tki3, a brooding hulk of red-trimmed black metal built in the early 1900s (see above photo).

In return for his adoption fee, about $500, which covers the cost of a new coat of paint, Boratynski will have his name etched into a plaque on the antique locomotive, once famed for having set a speed record of 110 kilometers per hour, or nearly 70 miles per hour, according to the wire service.

The Jaworzyna Slaska Museum is a former train depot located about 40 miles outside Wroclaw in western Poland. When the depot closed in the 1990s, many of its aging steam locomotives stayed there and risked being stripped for their scrap metal.

The hulking engines were saved thanks to a group of train enthusiasts, former railway workers and local authorities, as well as a private backer, according to Agence France-Presse.

The oldest of the 120 steam engines dates to the 19^th century, and train aficionados are especially fond of the locomotives that were built in Poland between the two world wars.

It takes volunteers about six months of painstaking work to restore the locomotives, and with five new “adoptions” this year, volunteers will have their hands full.

Not all memories associated with steam engines in Poland are good ones, though.

Some still associate Poland’s train tracks with the transport of Jews to the country’s Nazi concentration camps when it was occupied by Germany during World War II, according to the wire service.

“There is no way to know for sure how the museum’s trains were used during wartime, but most trains carrying Jews arrived from other countries,” it added.

The private museum drew 30,000 visitors last year, many of them train enthusiasts from across Europe, said Krzysztof Gryzgot, a museum employee and retired railroad worker who spent most of his career driving steam engines.

One of the museum’s centerpieces is an 80-ton, Polish-made PT31 locomotive. Of 110 such engines produced in 1931, just two survived World War II.

“Even today, she’s still the pride of Polish railways,” Gryzgot says of the one surviving PT31 engine parked at museum.

It would take about $450,000 for a full restoration of the engine. Gryzgot holds out hope that the engine may one day be restored to running order, despite the cost.

“We’ve already found a company that can do it. I’d also like to see it retrace its old route, from Wroclaw to Budapest, all the way to Istanbul,” he enthused.

(Above: A steam engine at the Jaworzyna Slaska Museum. Photo by Agence France-Presse.)

Conventional wisdom holds that the subject of race in the South is an inflexible, immutable issue, separate and distinct as regards blacks and whites. Just as importantly, it always has been, according to popular notion.

A couple of cursory examples:

• Southern blacks today are overwhelmingly seen as being aligned with the Democratic Party, while a solid majority of Southern whites are Republicans; and
• If you visit a so-called “black church” or a “white church” you’ll rarely find many people of the opposite race on hand.

But as selectively segregated as some institutions may appear to be today, there’s no doubt that race relations have thawed considerably in the region over the past 40 years. Obviously, Jim Crow didn’t do a whole lot to bring people of different backgrounds together prior to that, nor was it designed to.

However, one occasionally stumbles across a glimpse of a past that shows that not everything was as neatly delineated between the two races as today’s stereotypical view of yesteryear might have us believe.

If one looks hard enough, there are examples that show the South, like any part of the United States, was and is an infinitely more complex region than today’s television pundits and political opportunists would have us believe.

Case in point: Earlier this month while rambling through the South Carolina Upstate, I came across New Enoree Baptist Church, located in rural Newberry County, about six miles northeast of the town of Newberry.

The church itself was founded in 1868, apparently by ex-slaves who’d attended Enoree Baptist Church, one mile to the south, but who left after the War Between the States.

New Enoree Baptist’s graveyard begins along the south side of the church and runs up the gradually sloping hillside to a tree line some 300 feet away, with tombstones dating back to Reconstruction.

There are hundreds of graves scattered across the incline, but two caught my attention.

The first belonged to Jesse Burnside (see above photo). His stone didn’t list a date of birth, but did state that he died on Sept. 7, 1918, at the age of 78. The interesting part was what etched underneath the above information: “He was a servant of the Confederate soldiers in the war.”

There is considerable controversy today as to what role blacks played in the Confederate military during the Civil War. There are those who wildly inflate the numbers and even insist that some blacks fought alongside their white Confederate counterparts during the 1861-65 conflict.

On the other hand, there are those who insist that very few blacks played any role at all in the service of the Confederacy beyond what was entailed in being a slave.

Incomplete records have made it difficult to determine exactly what role blacks played in the service of the South, though it is indisputable that they were involved to some degree in many different areas.

Among other things, records shows that in 1923 the state of South Carolina paid pensions to 328 blacks for their service in the War Between the States, even if that role was not always clearly defined in the pension documents.

What’s interesting in the case of Burnside is that he, or his family, would choose to have his service in the war memorialized on his gravestone. Remember, by 1918 blacks had been pretty much completely disenfranchised by the state’s whites for nearly a full generation, and were second-class citizens in every sense of the term.

Of course, the possibility exists that someone other than a Burnside family member or Burnside himself paid for the stone, perhaps someone whom he had served during the war.

Tombstone of Wade Hampton Stephens (1877-1921), in New Enoree Baptist Church graveyard, Newberry County, SC.

The other tombstone that caught my attention was one belonging to Wade Hampton Stephens (right).

Stephens was born in August 1877, just about nine months after the pivotal election that brought Gen. Wade Hampton into the South Carolina governor’s office and helped bring Reconstruction in the Palmetto State to a close.

Today, many would be surprised to find that a black child was named after a famed Confederate cavalry commander and Democratic governor who helped “redeem” the state from the clutches of Federal occupation.

However, in the lead-up to the 1876 election, Hampton and his famed Red Shirts had more than a few blacks among their ranks, as many people of both races jumped at the chance to rid the state of what they considered a corrupt Republican administration, even if they often resorted to extra-legal measures, as did their Republican opponents.

Hampton, who became known as the “Savior of South Carolina,” was a beloved figured to many in the state and it’s not hard to see why his name would be a popular choice, particularly around the time of the 1876 election.

It’s feasible that Wade Hampton Stephens’ father himself was a Red Shirt, possibly one of the men of whom Edmund Drago wrote about in his 1999 book Hurrah for Hampton! Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction.

Wade Hampton Stephens outlived Burnside by nearly three years, dying on June 25, 1921. He was 43.

More than a dozen letters penned by French Enlightenment figure Voltaire nearly 300 years ago have been uncovered recently and are now being studied by a British professor.

Oxford academic Nicholas Cronk said the discovery reveals how much the famed Frenchman – whose real name was François-Marie Arouet – profited financially and intellectually from his stay in England in the 1720s.

The missives include a signed acceptance from the 18th century iconoclast for a £200 grant from the Royal Family, according to the BBC.

While in England, the writer and philosopher abandoned the French spelling of his first name instead styling himself “Francis,” which Cronk says is hardly surprising, given that Voltaire was “hugely opportunistic.”

All told, there are 14 newly discovered letters which are being studied by the Oxford-based Voltaire Foundation.

The foundation is carrying out a mammoth work of scholarship in which it will spend, all told, a half century to produce a definitive collected work of all Voltaire’s writing. It is expected to be completed by 2018.

Cronk, the foundation’s director, says the new letters were found in US libraries.

They shed light on the short period spent by Voltaire in England early in his literary career, and demonstrated the rapidity with which he acquired links with the powerful and wealthy, and became influenced by the work of English philosophers and scientists, according to the BBC.

Voltaire took these ideas back to continental Europe, with his books being read in many countries.

Voltaire wound up in England in unusual fashion. While in Paris in 1725 he responded to an insult from a young French nobleman in kind and, as a result, was imprisoned in the Bastille without trial.

Fearing an indefinite prison sentence, Voltaire suggested that he be exiled to England as an alternative punishment, which the French authorities accepted.

During Voltaire’s nearly three years in England he was intrigued by the idea of a constitutional monarchy, in contrast to the French absolute monarchy, and by the country’s greater support of the freedoms of speech and religion.

He was also influenced by several neoclassical writers of the age, and developed an interest in earlier English literature, especially the works of Shakespeare, still relatively unknown in continental Europe.

He would go to become famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, free trade and separation of church and state.

“Voltaire came to England as a relatively unknown poet with only a recommendation from the British ambassador to Paris, so to make the aristocratic connections that he did shows him to be a brilliant social climber,” Cronk said.

The letters are the only known example of his using an English form of his first name, Francis, instead of Francois in French, according to the BBC.

His use of the Anglicized form of his name followed the receipt of a financial handout from the British court, which boosted his fledgling career.

Voltaire, ever the opportunist, made the canny move of dedicating a poem to the future Queen Caroline – and Cronk said she is likely to have been the instigator of the £200 payment.

“The letter’s significance lies in the fact that this grant probably came to Voltaire at the request of Queen Caroline, a protector of the arts, which reinforces just how closely Voltaire had integrated himself into the English aristocracy in such a short time,” he said.

The writer had already changed his surname. “Voltaire” was an invention, drawn from a Latin anagram of his family surname.

This latest find is unlikely to be the last word on finding more of Voltaire’s letters.

There are more than 20,000 letters from Voltaire known to scholars, but Cronk believes that there could still be thousands that remain unidentified.

(HT: A Blog About History)

Reason No. 375 why newspapers are struggling: The stories just aren’t as captivating as they once were.

Take the following account from the June 18, 1943, Morning Bulletin of Rockhampton, Australia, recounted by the blog buried words and bushwa:

CAIRNS (Australia) – Defying all attempts at removal, a small fish which entered Samuel Attard’s throat, head first, while he was swimming in the Russell River this afternoon, was the cause of a most unusual tragedy.

Attard, who was a maltose cane cutter, aged 34, had been swimming in the river with a mate, who on missing him, searched and found him at the foot of a 30 ft. bank in distress. At first they were unable to find the cause of the trouble, but when the tail of a fish was seen in the back of his throat the ambulance at Babinda, 13 miles away, was sent for. Their efforts to remove the fish failed and artificial respiration was unavailing. So completely had the fish blocked his throat that it was impossible to pass a tube. Later an attempt to provide air by way of an opening in the throat was also tried, but it was unsuccessful.. When a doctor arrived he pronounced life extinct.

Buried words and bushwa didn’t leave it at that, however. The blog followed up the newspaper story by reading about the coroner’s inquest.

It turns out that Attard’s demise came because he employed a method of fishing known as dynamiting, or blast fishing, which consists of tossing explosives into a body of water, then scooping up stunned and dead fish when they float to the surface.

Attard climbed a tree and tossed the explosives into a swimming hole before jumping into the water to retrieve the fish, buried words and bushwa writes.

Apparently his usual practice was to put a fish in his mouth once his hands were full.

“Attard had no top teeth so it was quite easy for the slippery little critter to slide into his throat,” the blog explains.

Buried words and bushwa closes with the following: “It sounds as though bystanders tried a few things to keep Attard breathing, but I am not sure how effective a riverbank tracheotomy would be unless it is performed by an actual doctor… ”

Eighteen months after being discovered on Fiji’s Kadavu Island, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has confirmed the existence of a new flowering plant.

The plant belongs to the scarce Medinilla group and is one of nearly 200 known species, which includes several varieties found only in Fiji, a South Pacific island nation.

“Although the plant was first found in August of 2010, it has taken this long to go through the process and verify it,” Ewa Ewa Magiera, a spokeswoman for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told Agence France-Presse.

The plant was found during a biodiversity assessment of Fiji’s Nakasaleka district carried out as part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Water and Nature Initiative, Magiera said.

There are some 193 known species of Medinilla in Madagascar, Africa, South Asia and the Pacific Islands, according to the conservation body.

Of the 11 that can only be found in Fiji, they include the Tagimoucia flower, the country’s floral emblem.

The Medinilla was named for Don Jose de Medinilla y Pifieda, the Spanish governor of the Marianas from 1812-1822.

Medinillas are evergreen shrubs or lianas. The leaves are opposite or whorled, or alternate in some species. The flowers are white or pink, produced in large panicles.

(Above: Picture of new species of flower belonging to the Medinilla plant group, found in August 2010 in Fiji. Photo by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.)