Salvia messii: The New Endangered Plant Honoring Messi

Botanists working in the Peruvian Andes have given one of the world's most famous athletes an unusual new tribute: a plant that carries his name. The species, newly described as Salvia messii, is an aromatic shrub from the mint family whose pale blue and white flowers match the colors of Argentina's national football jersey. Its formal description appeared in this month's edition of the botanical journal Phytotaxa, in a paper titled "A remarkable new Salvia (Lamiaceae) from the ecotonal vegetation surrounding the western Andean relict forests of Peru." The discovery puts a football icon's name on a species that scientists say is already in trouble.

The research team was led by Paúl Gonzáles of the Natural History Museum at the National University of San Marcos in Peru, working with Argentine researcher Rolando Uría and biologist Jean Capcha-Ramos of the Peruvian conservation organization Huarango Nature, according to reporting on the study. Their field investigations ran from 2023 to 2025. They collected specimens from rocky ravines and examined the flowers under laboratory conditions, comparing their characteristics with existing botanical collections before concluding that the plant was a distinct species. The paper documenting the find was published on October 2, 2026.

Why the flower wears Messi's colors

The researchers said the plant's flowers helped inspire the decision to name it after Lionel Messi. The blossoms pair a white tubular structure with a light blue upper lip, while the surrounding bracts carry shades of pink or fuchsia, according to the description published in Phytotaxa. Those pale blue and white tones are the same colors Messi has worn throughout his international career with Argentina. News of the naming traveled fast on football social media, with ESPN's football account sharing the story on October 17, as quoted in The Voice News Magazine's coverage of the find.

The spelling of the name follows the rules of botanical nomenclature rather than a typo. Adding the letter "i" to a honoree's surname forms the Latin genitive, so Salvia messii translates roughly as "Messi's plant," a reading Soccer Laduma's coverage attributed to the French sports paper L'Équipe. It is a standard convention for species named in honor of a person, and it places Messi in a long line of athletes, musicians, and public figures whose names now appear in Latin binomials.

A shrub built for thin mountain air

Salvia messii grows on rocky, arid mountain slopes between two thousand and two thousand four hundred metres above sea level in the central and southern Andes of Peru. The plant can reach about 1.5 metres in height, growing as a woody aromatic shrub adapted to dry, sun-exposed ground. The researchers documented it in six locations across Peru's Lima and Ica departments, a narrow range that shaped everything that came next in the paper. Although the plant is small and easy to miss, its family is one of the most familiar in the plant world: Lamiaceae, the mint family, which also includes mint, rosemary, basil, and common sage.

The discovery also draws attention to a habitat that scientists have studied less than it deserves. The transitional shrublands around remnant Andean forests hold distinctive plant life, yet they get far less research attention than the forests themselves, according to the team. Each new species described from these zones adds to the record of Peru's mountain diversity, and plants like Salvia messii show how much of it could disappear before it is ever documented.

An endangered debut

The researchers classified Salvia messii as endangered, a status driven by its restricted distribution and the pressures on its habitat. Its limited range makes it vulnerable to damage that a widespread species might survive. The threats reported around its habitat include recurring wildfires, prolonged dry periods, and road construction that can disturb or destroy the ground where it grows. Climate change and forest fires in the region add to the risk, and scientists have warned that these pressures could strain a species confined to a handful of sites.

Naming the plant does not protect it. The researchers have proposed practical safeguards, including conserving seeds in germplasm banks to preserve the species' genetic material as insurance against the loss of wild populations. Further survey work could also turn up additional populations beyond the six documented sites, which would give conservation planners a clearer picture of how much room the species has left. Plenty of plant species are still undocumented, and fieldwork like this is what stands between them and quiet extinction.

Salvia messii is not the first organism to borrow Messi's name. A fungus called Cercopemyces messii and a Patagonian spider named Acanthogonatus messii already carry it, and Soccer Laduma's coverage says this latest naming makes it the sixth species overall named after the footballer. Messi, now thirty-nine, has won the Ballon d'Or a record eight times and captained Argentina to the 2022 World Cup title. A blue-and-white flower on an Andean slope is an odd addition to that honors list, and it is a fragile one. Similar botanical finds have crossed this site's Plants and Trees coverage before, from the giant waterlily identified through an Instagram photo to the rule-breaking magnolia found in Vietnam's high peaks. External reporting on the species appeared in Fact Harbour News and Madhyamam.