By Susan Milius
Botanists couldn’t see the forest or the trees.
An acacia in northern Africa that grows six meters tall and dominates the landscape across an area almost three times the size of Rhode Island is new to science.
“It’s astounding,” says David Mabberley of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England. He summarizes the findings in the April 24 Science, though the tree was officially named Acacia fumosa online in the Nordic Journal of Botany in September 2008.