Ludicrous Flower Friday

Difficult it is to describe my mood. The semester is over except for posting of the grades. The many student achievements please me, and the missed opportunities sadden me. Relief is certainly a prominent reaction. So what better to improve my mood than to provide you with a cool flower to ogle, a hybrid with a rather interesting geographic background. Quite a number of plant genera are disjunct between eastern China and eastern North America, and although the two parents bear different generic names, Calycanthus and Sinocalycanthus, they are so very similar they are now often considered a single genus. Like other magnoliids of which the Phactor is so fond, all the floral parts are numerous, spirally arranged, and gradually shift from green sepal-like parts, to petals, to stamens, to pistils. Fully open the flowers are a bit over 3 inches in diameter and so make for a quite a display. The fragrance is a fermented fruity odor. Our native species, C. florida Carolina allspice, has dark purple flowers; the Asian parent white flowers.