Field of Science

Friday Fabulous Flower - Not so much

Our glasshouse is home to a great many species that are used mostly in teaching for a great variety of reasons. Today's flower (see if you can guess what it is) is fabulous only because the plant seldom flowers, especially in captivity, and at about 1 cm diameter even then the flowers often go unnoticed. As can be readily seen, this is a staminate flower of rather simple construction consisting as it does of 9 stamens and 3 petalloid perianth parts. Quite likely our glasshouse resident is a single clone, and therefore a single "male", so pistillate flowers are not going to appear.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it a water plant? Vallisneria?

Brian said...

Yes, I think an aquatic plant, but maybe not Vallisneria ...how about Egeria densa = Elodea densa

a pretty little flower anyway,

Brian

The Phytophactor said...

Water plant? Yes! Elodea? Yes! Congratulations people.