in The Greenhouse
Botanical images - winners!
Every year the Botanical Society of America has a student image contest with winners receiving travel awards to attend the annual society meeting. Sometimes the images reflect the research interests of the students, and other times they just happened upon something cool and got a good picture. Take a look at the winners and see if you can identify the plant in the winning image. This plant's stunning seeds, whose seed coats probably mimic fleshy red arils to entice birds to ingest and disperse them. The plant is a vine and many years ago yours truly took a similar picture of this viny plant clambering over a small tree, which happened to be Strychnos nux-vomitoria making this the deadliest picture ever.
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5 comments:
Abrus precatorius, and I haven't looked at the picture yet.
nux-vomica, rather than vomitoria wasn't it?
Pat's guessing without looking! Wow! If you're so sure then you can go look and then declare yourself the winner.
And thanks for the correction of the misrememberance; Strychnos nux-vomica it is. Got epithet confused with yaupon's perhaps.
I know a bit about poisons, as a young boy I never got interested in explosives or cars.
Pat, in spite of being unusual as a youth, did indeed correctly identify the image, without peeking, as seeds of Abrus precatorius, the rosary pea. The scarlet and black seeds are so striking they are often fashioned into jewelry or rosary beads, but they are shockingly toxic if consumed.
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