Friday Fabulous Flower - Closed?

 

A friend once brought a picture of this plant to me and asked why don't the flowers ever open.  An interesting question surely.  TPP once studied a tropical flower that looked quite open but wasn't functional until it reclosed.  But this is called the bottle gentian, Gentiana andrewsii, and the flowers don't open any more than this.  It takes a big robust pollinator, like a bumblebee, to force its way into the flower, and in the process move some pollen around.  This is an interesting way for the plant to select a particular pollinator.  Sorry honey bee, you can't pollinate this native plant.  This can make a nice addition for fall, partial shade flowering.  Someone is bound to ask about when do the flower buds open.

Friday fabulous flower - closed for business

TPP doesn't know if he's late with the last FFF or early for the next one.  Guess the blogs could have been numbered but that would be just too damned organized and it's a little late now.  OK this image comes from the F1 and her flower garden, the one being abandoned to start over again on her own property.  This particular plant is a fall flowering species, and it is just a little peculiar in the flowers don't open.  This limits pollination to bumblebees who are big enough and strong enough to pry open the corolla.  This is the bottle or closed gentian, Gentiana andrewsii.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Bottle Gentian

One of the more interesting, but not the showiest, summer wild flowers in our garden is the bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii). A student surveying flowering in a prairie once made an obvious observational error. They kept waiting for the flower to, well, flower, and it did, but not in the way they expected. The corolla of these flowers never actually opens even though the flower is mature and functional. It takes a pretty hefty pollinator to pull the corolla open to get inside the flower, and the brute around here is the bumblebee. No idea whether the carpenter bee can pollinate the flower or not. At this stage our plants are a bit small in this their 2nd year, and perhaps they are not in the best location as quite a few plants around growing more aggressively that are perhaps providing a bit too much shade. But this is a nice tough little plant and can be combined with shrinking violets.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Prairie Gentian

Fall is a distinct flowering season in the prairie community, but few people see the little gems that hide down among the tall grasses. The taller wands of the goldenrods are more familiar. What a delight to suddenly come upon the Prairie gentian (Gentiana puberulenta) and spot those brilliant blue flowers way down (only about 18" tall) among the browning grasses that presently stand some 7-8 feet tall. You cannot help but admire the intense blue color of gentian flowers whether they be little alpine species or our big flowered species, and naturally, gentian blue refers to a deep, slightly purple color. Virtually no specimens of this species have been added to our herbarium collection in the past 100 years which largely reflects how thoroughly the tall-grass prairie in Lincolnland has been eradicated. Another curious gentian also occurs in our area, the bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii), but this species is not so renowned for its glorious flowers because the corolla never opens! This is an interesting means of limiting visits to those pollinators big enough to push their way in, which means bumblebees. Hard to know when this gentian is in full bloom.