• Although used for centuries by the Cacua Indigenous people in Colombia, the táam palm was, until recently, unknown to science. During fieldwork in the village of Wacará, two botanists were offered to eat a fruit they had never seen before, so they set out to discover what species it was.
• With help from the Indigenous community, they were able to find the palm and collect samples in line with the Cacua people’s approach to conserving the plant.
• Lab tests showed that táam was a palm species previously unknown to science that researchers named Attalea taam. After the discovery, the botanists returned to the community and started a participatory process to study the palm’s ecology and distribution.
• Several members of the Cacua community co-authored the scientific paper describing the new species. By relying on Indigenous knowledge and mapping, the researchers say they have obtained better results than through using just a Western scientific approach.