For nearly two centuries, it survived like a rumour in the margins of botanical history.

In 1836, British botanists recorded a climbing shrub with unusual blueberry-like fruits in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. Then, it vanished from scientific records. No fresh sightings. No herbarium updates. No confirmed trace in the wild.

Now, 188 years later, that plant has resurfaced in one of India’s most remote forest landscapes.

Researchers have rediscovered Vaccinium piliferum — a rare wild relative of the blueberry — in the dense forests of Vijoynagar in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district, a region where rivers cut through thick Eastern Himalayan rainforest.

The rediscovery is being seen as a major botanical breakthrough for India’s biodiversity records, not just because the species was presumed lost for generations, but because scientists found only 16 individual plants surviving in the wild.

Found again in........

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