Dr. Dennis Breedlove, then curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences, first discovered Deppea splendens in 1972 in a canyon on Cerro Mozotal, a mountain in Chiapas. The clusters of yellow-orange flowers are quite attractive, dangling from the ends of incredibly thin and wiry peduncles, and set off by claret calyces. Seed was collected only once in 1981, and when Dr. Breedlove returned in 1986, he found that the area had been cleared by local corn farmers, leaving only small remnant pockets of original vegetation. No individuals of D. splendens were found.

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The species has never been discovered in any other location, and is now presumed extinct in the wild. All extant germplasm is held in a few botanical gardens, mostly in the western U.S. In the 1990's, the Huntington Botanical Garden and Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden began to track down how many seedlings clones still exist of the orginial seed batch from Dr. Breedlove. So far, nine individuals have been found, representing the entire known germplasm of this species.