If you were a flower, what flower would it be?

You've asked yourself this many times. Well, thanks to the AoB blog you can take a personality quiz that then based upon who knows what old notions of the character of certain flowers to find out the answer to that question. Here's the link to the AoB blog; the next link will take you directly to the flower-personality quiz at the Linnaean garden web page.  You know this will be fun.  But frankly, TPP is not all that enthralled with his own results although it could be much worse than columbine; it could have been cannonball tree.

Flowers - a cosmic, comic interpretation

Imagining how our customs appear from an alien perspective is always a great comic device, so this cartoon is pretty funny, and a good introduction to SMBC Comics (Saturday morning breakfast cereal, in case you didn't know).  Some of our flower customs are pretty ancient; apparently Neanderthals were buried with bundles of flowers.  However, no matter how amusing, TPP remains annoyed by the idea that floral parts are plant genitalia.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  The gaudy floral parts are largely sterile, modified leaves with a function of attraction.  The other parts are sporophylls, modified leaves bearing sporangia, a form of asexual reproduction.  This rather carries the wrong message doesn't it?  Sterility and no sex involved.  But clearly giving the focus of your affection a vial of pollen (Look at all those virile haploid male plants!) may send the wrong message.  Of course the plant genitalia misconception is also very long standing as are the very wrong labels derived from this misconception (gynoecium, androecium, ovary, ovule).  So every semester TPP girds his loins to battle once again such misconceptions, generally losing out to in some cases to the "I don't care if it's wrong, it's how I know it" complacency.  HT to a Million Gods. 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Little things in small packages

Nice little things come in small packages, but we often over look the small flowers around us because so many of our ornamental plants have been chosen and selected to have big flowers.  Here's a flowering shrub whose flowers hardly get noticed because even in axillary clusters they are a pretty small display. 

An individual flower is only 2-3 mm across.  This shrub flowers on new wood, this year's growth, and sequentially from bottom to top of the branch.  Long time readers have actually seen this before because TPP featured it way back in 2008, but in October when it's fruit display was at peak attractiveness, and long after it had flowered.  With summer flowering generally diminished by the drought, these flowers were getting plenty of attention from insects.  Fruit eating migratory birds like these shade tolerant shrubs' fruits a lot.  In the tropics you see more bright blue-purple fruit colors than in the temperate zone.  By now you've probably figured out or check the link to discover this is an azure beauty berry (Callicarpa dichotoma).

Friday Fabulous Flower - Vanilla

The Phactor would be quite remiss to not post a FFF for the 2nd week in a row and it was kind of readers not to mention this.  This is a pretty attractive flower, but this is the best photo that could be acquired with any ease at all since the silly plant has climbed a tall Madagascan succulent and now hangs down from way above.  This is a species of Vanilla, an orchid, V. aphylla to be exact.  Aphylla means without leaves, and indeed the leaves of this species are reduced to a vestigial size and the vine, which climbs by means of contractile, grasping adventitious roots, conducts its photosynthesis in its green stem.  Clearly this species is adapted to drier habitats, one of which is probably rather exposed tree trunks.   No one is certain if this plant is still in contact with soil anywhere; it seems to get all the water it needs from the humidity or a spray of water every few days.  It's a native of SE Asia and came from Thailand a long time ago.  From this angle you can just see the hairy purple nature of the throat in contrast to the greenish yellow of the other perianth parts, which are about 5-6 cm across. 

Flower, Fruit - What's the difference?

A reader asks what is the difference between a flower and a fruit? Oh, the Phactor wishes he got a dollar for every time he's answered this question. In fact, why not? To read further deposit one dollar US in the slot to the right of your monitor. Hurry, this display will automatically turn off if you do not pay by ... 3, 2, 1. ? ? ? You're still there?
If you can still see this, something didn't work correctly. Most of the other bloggers here don't know that FoS has and allows this pay as you go system, so let's keep this just between us for now. Damn, there goes this week's lunch money.
Flowers and fruits are the same thing, but at different stages. Flowers are at the stage of pollen dispersal; fruits are at the stage of seed dispersal. Both have many diverse adaptations for accomplishing these dispersals. Usually the showy parts of the flower, one or two whorls of perianth and the androecium (stamens) having functioned in pollen dispersal are discarded post pollination while the rest of the flower undergoes more development to become a fruit containing one to many seeds.
That's all you get for free.

Friday Fabulous Flower - At the stage of seed dispersal

A fruit is a flower at the stage of seed dispersal. Fruits aren't something different, just those parts of flowers that undergo a post-pollination development. Here's a particularly interesting one of Paeonia japonica, a species new to our gardens, and what a cool fruit/seed display. The follicle-like fruitlets have an unimpressive dull green-gray to brownish color, looking a bit like a short pea pod, until they dehisce, opening along a lateral suture and then how colorful is that! The fertile seeds have a dark blue fleshy covering (aril probably, or fleshy seed coat) while the undeveloped seed are soft, fleshy and red, and makes you wonder if this is a plant making to most of an otherwise wasted resource (unpollinated seeds) as an attractant and reward because they are considerably larger than at the time of pollination. If not pollinated, most ovules abort their development. The inner fruit wall is purple. This display is exactly what you would expect for bird seed dispersers. Calling all cedar waxwings!

Friday Fabulous Flower - St. John's Wort

Nothing makes the pollen-gathering bees happier than the flowering of our shrubby st. john's wort (Hypericum frondosum). You can see why one of the popular varieties is called 'sunburst'. Although the flower is only about 4 cm in diameter, the shrub produces masses of flowers at once for quite a buzzing display. As easily observed the stamens are numerous which is typical for this family, Clusiaceae, formerly Guttiferae. Given the number of stamens and the number of bees (at least 5 different ones) collecting pollen, how could the single pistil not get pollinated? If you google st. john's wort you'll get pages and pages advertising and discussing it as an herbal remedy for depression, but according to Quack Watch the best clincal trials have not found its effect to be significantly different from a placebo control. However this does not affect its sale as an herbal supplement or from its purveyors making false claims about its value. Better to enjoy the flowers and bees.

Look what's "flowering"!

During a recent greenhouse visit a species of Ephedra was in "flower". Ephedra is a small shrubby plant of cool deserts better known as the source of ephedrine, and in Asia it's long been an herbal remedy for asthma and poor circulation. Here's several of the pollen producing cones. Branching structures that bear the sporangia and protrude out from among bracts that compose the little cones. The bracts occur in pairs and subtend the sporangia bearing axes each of which during development is enveloped by a fused pair of smaller bracts. So here's a pollen producing structure surrounded by a pair of modified leaves growing in the axil of a bract. That's pretty flower-like even down to having a perianth. Ephedra even has double fertilization, but both produce zygotes, although only one will develop, so no endosperm is formed. The genus is a member of the gnetophytes, a group of pretty strange plants that was once thought to have affinities to flowering plants.

When is a flower not a flower?

Some flowers are quite strange, and some are not at all what they seem. So let's begin at the beginning. It seemed like a good idea when a shallow cement basin was discovered during an archeological dig in our garden to preserve the structure and convert it into a boggy habitat. This didn't go particularly well initially, but presently the current residents (marsh marigold, cardinal lobelia, bishop's weed) are doing fairly well if squirrels would leave things be. The toughest of these is the bishop's weed (Houttuynia cordata) which wouldn't be all that attractive if it were not for cultivars with varigated leaves. This is easy to grow in wettish areas making quite a nice ground cover, and in fact having it confined in concrete isn't such a bad idea. At any rate, while not it's most spectacular feature, it flowers here in early summer. Now actually what you are looking at are very very small flowers on a spike, a columnar inflorescence, subtended by four white bracts that have the appearance of a perianth making the whole thing look like a flower. Actually only the flowers on the lower third are open. Aggregations of tiny flowers into spikes is typical of the lizard tail family.

Plant ID Cell Phone App

For those of you who have found cell phones useful, there soon will be a new application (that's what app stands for) that will take that picture of a flower or leaf you took and compare it via a google like search, but using images not words, to identify the plant. Now the Phactor has no idea how good the Leafsnap plant ID app is, but the botanist involved is my old buddy John Kress of the Smithsonian, the guy someone called the Indiana Jones of Ginger, and he does know his stuff, and no question about it, this cell phone app will be a whole lot easier to move around than John's usual plant ID facility, the Smithsonian's millions of plant specimens housed in their (our) herbarium. So if you find yourself lost deep in the wilds of New York's Central Park (Well, you have to start somewhere with plant ID so why not someplace central?) you can identify every plant found there with a leaf, flower, or fruit. So those of you actually have a cell phone, a smart one that can use these apps, do let us know how it goes. Now as a long time experienced plant IDer, it will be interesting to see how this works because variation is the demon, and how does the program make image comparisons? Maybe the software is borrowed from the face recognition programs that work so well on the CSI programs, but then again they seem to have scanning electron microscopes that no only image things like pollen grains but label them for you! Oh, did anyone mention that Leafsnap is free? Plant ID will be added to the list of reasons why the Phactor doesn't need a cell phone.

Friday Fabulous "Flower" - Euphorbia

As the days lengthen and the sunlight heats up the greenhouse, a lot of our tropical plants begin to flower. This is Euphorbia splendens and as the name suggests it is a pretty spectacular plant, with a cluster of spiny stems terminated by a helical whorl of leaves and very showy clusters of "flowers". This plant grew in the miserable little excuse for a greenhouse that was at my undergraduate college, and a particularly perverse botanist (Aren't they all a bit perverse?) let a pair of us struggle all afternoon to identify the family knowing full well we were making a fundamental mental error. Yes, we kept trying to sort out the flower's parts and nothing made any sense because the key separated out plants with milky sap without regard to flowers, and this plant readily oozes latex, and if we'd paid attention it all would have made sense. The flowers in this genus and family are small and unisexual, and in plants like this a number of flowers are clustered together into an inflorescence surrounded by a pair of very showy bracts. So those aren't petals or perianth at all, and the number of flowers per cluster isn't constant, so it seems you have different numbers of pistils and stamens. But did the Phactor ever forget this lesson? No, you only get to fool me once.

Friday Fabulous "Flower" - A Basal Angiosperm

Here's a not very awesome image of a "flower" of Trithuria submerse (Hydatellaceae). As the name suggests this is a monogeneric family of small, aquatic "grassy" plants that were long classified as monocots. The word flower is in quotes because like some of the oldest fossils of flowers, e.g. Archaefructus, it brings into question what should be called a flower. In this case what you actually see is best referred to as a "reproductive unit", which can vary in the number and ratio of subunits, in this case consisting of 4 simple pistillate flowers (C = carpel; H = stigmatic hair) each associated with a bract (B), a modified leaf, surrounding a single stamen/flower (A-anther, F-filament)(Bar = 0.5 mm). The morphological features do not suggest any close relationships, but molecular data surprised everyone by showing them to be a sister group to the waterlilies (Nymphaeaceae) and part of one of the basal lineages of flowering plants, those plants that have the most ancient common ancestry with the rest of angiosperms. These basal lineages are referred to as the ANA grade where the N stands for waterlilies now including this little vestigial (?) waterlily. The image is compliments of a recent study of the reproductive ecology which find that mostly it self pollinates, probably a mechanism for rapid reproduction in its ephemeral shallow-water habitat. That such plants look monocoty is not a surprise; basal angiosperms, basal monocots, and magnolid dicots all tend to have flowers with parts in multiples of 3s and often numerous. Others are very few-parted and simple. Water lilies also have only one cotyledon, but remember that several gymnosperms also have 2 cotyledons, so this sure does mess up the old traditional monocot-dicot taxonomy. The Phactor will save that lesson for another time.

Friday Fabulous Flower – At the Stage of Seed Dispersal

This isn’t precisely a flower, but then again it is a flower at the stage of seed dispersal, but a very pretty and unusual image the result of having gelatinous seed coats. This also isn’t exactly a common plant especially when viewed this way. So who recognizes this very nifty image?

Friday Fabulous Flower - Dead Stick Plant

Some plants do not attract much attention, sometimes because people only notice gaudy, sometimes because they are relatively uncommon or quite strange and people just don't know what to make of them, and sometimes because they are not meant to be noticed. The dead stick plant (Cynanchum marnierianum) is a leafless succulent consisting of long slender, pendent stems that look quite dead, perhaps the perfect houseplant. It has been suggested that the plant avoids herbivores by being so cryptic, but since its native habitat are dry forests of Madagascar, the coloration might simply be a filter for intense tropical sun. However if the dead stick plant is not indeed dead, then seasonally it bursts into bloom and the stems are covered with these delightful 1 cm diameter chartreuse bird cage flowers. The more taxonomically more sophisticated among you may immediately recognize the flowers as rather typical for members of the milkweed family which contains many stem and leaf succulents. This is what discounts the cryptic coloration story; milkweeds are usually pretty well protected against most herbivores. These plants actually do make good house plants if you have a sunny place for a hanging basket and like a bit of bizarre among your plants and can avoid over watering.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Beach Rose

Today's vacation adventures included exploring beach and salt marsh conservation areas, very interesting and very fragile coastal communities of great importance ecologically. So why not pick a fabulous flower from this area like the beach rose? OK, some of you may wish to suggest to the Phactor that this is a picture of a rose hip, the fruit of the beach rose (Rosa rugosa), not the extremely fragrant pink flower. However, one of the best definitions of a fruit is a flower at the stage of seed dispersal. Large patches of this rose, probably individual clones, dominate certain portions of sandy coastal areas, but this rose is an exotic species naturalized in these areas. A little later in the season these fruits will be more flavorful and juicy, and they make quite nice jelly.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Tigerlily

This week’s Friday Fabulous Flower is being posted on Thursday because the Phactor is off on a short, local botanical geek tour and quite possibly some component will be blogged next week. Stay tuned. Although it seems rather early in June everything else is early so why should this tiger lily be any different. Standing nearly 6 feet tall with vividly orange flowers this is without question one of my favorite lilies (Lilium lancifolium – formerly Lilium tigrinum). Now why a lily with heavily spotted flowers would be called “tiger” rather than say “leopard” raises an interesting question. It isn’t striped. My companion in gardening gets credit for rescuing this beastly lily from an overgrown hedgerow where it had not flowered in years so what it was precisely was unknown to her. With a couple of years in a better location, it’s vigor restored, the tiger now stands guard next to our garden gate. Enjoy.

Ludicrous Flower Friday

TGIFF - Yes, nothing can lift spirits more than another wonderful flower to ponder and appreciate. One of the great things about teaching rain forest ecology are the field trips, and today's flower grows in Costa Rica. Like many tropical trees, this species is cauliflorous, the flowers sprout right out of the tree trunk, rather like a overly gaudy baubles. And of course it helps to be conspicuous in the dim light of the rain forest understory. This flower can also take you a bit of time to figure out because there seem to be more parts than typical flowers and they are arranged rather differently than typical flowers. And that's where the fun is! This is a wild species of Theobroma, literally the "drink of the gods", and the domesticated species T. cacao is our source of cocoa, chocolate. Got that? C-A-C-A-O is the plant, C-O-C-O-A is the product.

Drink of the gods

This is a pretty interesting rain forest flower for several reasons. One it's sort of hard to figure out what parts is what; two, the flowers appear right out of the trunk of the tree; three its generic name, Theobroma, means "drink of the gods"; and four, the common name of the most famous product from this genus is Mayan for bitter water. This is a wild species, but the cultivated species is also called cacao, the source of chocolate, or "chocolatl" (bitter water). And a spicy, fatty version of hot chocolate was the royal beverage of Aztecs. In the evergreen tropics many trees produce flowers on "old wood", their limbs and trunks where the leaves don't obscure the flowers, a phenomenon called cauliflory. Back up in Lincolnland red bud is one of the few temperate trees that do this. Red pods will follow. The mature seeds are the source of chocolate.

On other fronts the students are proving to be a great lot this year, very interested and very industrious. It has been wet, raining every night, and showers almost every day. However nothing like last year's forest-field station flooding deluge. Woke up this AM to the gargling call of oropendolas.

Cannonball tree - another ludicrous flower to enjoy!

While clearing out lab space the Phactor happened upon a box of old 3.5” disks (Hey, there are still boxes of 5.25” disks around here too.) that were used as the file storage medium for the 1st digital camera our department ever purchased. And they were filled with images from the tropics, and although now looking a bit low in resolution, such images are not easily replaced. It’s been awhile since the Phactor had a good ludicrous flower for you to enjoy, so here’s the flower of Couroupita guianensis, the cannonball tree.

As you may judge from the fingers (upper left), the flower is pretty large, some 5-6 inches across, and rather luridly colored orange-red, and not of the usual floral organization. The petals are not equal and in a nice regular whorl. The thing that looks a bit like a sea anemone is an androphore, a structure that bears anthers, and the rather thickish anther filaments are lavender. The furry-fuzzy disk behind is composed of sterile anthers with a single pistil in the middle that develops into a hard, cannonball-sized (6-8" diam) fruit. Like many tropical trees, this one produces flowers on its trunk rather than among its leafy branches, but this tree grows a mantle of leafless, twisty-turny dangling branches upon which flowers and fruits are borne. While a native of the neotropics, cannonball tree has been planted around the tropics as a curiosity.

Appreciation of flowers

The Phactor was thinking how it’s rather a nice thing to like flowers, and how apparently this is not so new. This came to mind when I found some nice concrete examples of floral imagery, as illustrated by this bas relief from Central Park NYC. The second image is from the archeological ruins of Troy. Other than the wear and tear of millennia, they are quite similar, and I quite doubt that any bits of NYC will look so good so many years after getting sacked by the Greeks. (New Yorkers: Be careful what gifts you accept.)

We humans so love the way flowers look that we decorate our properties, celebrate special events, declare our affections with flowers, and decorate with them at births, marriages, and deaths. Our connection to flowers is so ingrained in our psyche that the failure to appreciate their aesthetics is a sign of clinical depression. (Oh, dear what if you don't like this?) Apparently the human appreciation of flowers is nothing new. Pollen from bundles of flowers found in Neanderthal graves shows that honoring people in death has not changed very much over the past 150,000 years.


So what kinds of flowers are they? Any ideas?