“It was my first time planning an expedition where we weren’t sure we’d even enter a forest,” added Mr Pitman.

“But as soon as we got on the ground, we found remnants of intact cloud forest, and we spotted G. extinctus on the first day, within the first couple hours of searching.

“We didn’t have a photo to compare it to. We only had images of dried herbarium specimens, a line drawing, and a written description, but we were pretty sure that we’d found it based on its poky little hairs and showy ‘pot-bellied’ flowers.

“Finding G. extinctus was great, but what we’re even more excited about is finding some spectacular forest in a place where scientists had feared everything was gone.”

The team sent photos to a taxonomic expert who confirmed that the flowers were Gasteranthus extinctus.

The plant will keep its name because biology’s code of nomenclature has strict rules around renaming an organism, meaning it cannot be changed.

The team is now working with Ecuadorian conservationists to protect the habitats where the remaining flowers live.

The discovery of the flower was published in the journal PhytoKeys.