Lost and found: how a photographer sniffed out the magnolia species not seen for a century

Eladio Fernandez was rewarded after an arduous hike up a Haitian mountain, following in the footsteps of the Swedish botanist who last saw the fragrant flower in 1925

Imagine the privilege of smelling a wonderful perfume that no one else alive on Earth has smelled before," says the conservation photographer Eladio Fernandez. This year, Fernandez had that pleasure. After a challenging search in the cloud forests of northern Haiti, he located several Magnolia emarginata, a critically endangered tree with white flowers that hadn't been seen (or smelled) for almost a century.

Magnolia have two attractive characteristics: their beautiful white flowers and their unique fragrance," he says.