When previously unknown plants and animals are discovered, they are usually either very small or very rare. An extraordinary exception is a tree new to science, which dominates the vegetation over an area of at least 8,000 sq km in the war zone of Somalia.

In the journal Science, David Mabberley describes the tree's recent discovery in south-eastern Ogaden by a team of botanists led by Mats Thulin of the University of Uppsala in Sweden. They named it Acacia fumosia.