In the gloom of the caves and gorges of China, a plant has been
discovered thriving in as little as .04 percent of full
sunlight. The three newly described species are nettles (Pilea
sp.), in the same family as the stinging nettles, which can be
the bane of the unwary hiker. The Gollum-like greenery lives
only in a few locations, so one of the species is listed as
endangered and two as vulnerable on the International Union for
Conservation of Nature’s Red List. "When my Chinese colleague
Wei Yi-Gang from the Guangxi Institute of Botany first mentioned
cave-dwelling plants to me, I thought that he was mistranslating
a Chinese word into English,” study author Alex Monro of Royal
Botanic Gardens Kew said in a press release. “When we stepped
into our first cave, Yangzi cave, I was spell-bound. It had an
eerie moonscape look to it and all I could see were clumps of
plants in the nettle family growing in very dark condition". The
newly discovered nettles grow in the ancient limestone
formations of Guangxi province