🌴 Scott Zona, Ph.D. 🌴

Fantastic!!!

I think those are totally spectacular!

Photo of a pair of small, conical, dense inflorescences emerging from the soil. The bracts are dark purple; the tubular flowers are purple with yellow throats. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Orobanche cooperi is another holoparasitic Orobanchaceae from southwestern North America. Isn’t it fantastic? A bad-ass beauty! #parasite #Orobanchaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

So true! 😅

I believe the seeds are wind dispersed. This plant was semi-cultivated. The gardener purchased some bits of roots infected with the parasite & buried the roots near a suitable host. Nature did the rest.

Photo of clusters of purple plants emerging from the ground around the surface root of a tree. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Holoparasites are those plants that take water (+ minerals) AND sugars from their hosts. These plants lack both roots and chlorophyll, so they are wholly dependent on their hosts. This is the magnificent Lathraea clandestina. #parasite #Orobanchaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

According to the USDA Plants database, Rhinanthus minor is already present in NW OR (possibly in the Willamette Valley, but I didn't dig that deeply). Seek some advice from your local extension agent. You don't want to be responsible for introducing an invasive, but it may already be there.

Photo of a hand grasping a small, leafy plant with reddish leaves and terminal racemes of pink, tubular flowers. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC4.

Neobartsia mutica is another hemiparasite. It has a broad distribution across South America (I recently saw it in the Andes of Peru). Like so many of these hemiparasites, it has showy flowers. This one may be adapted to hummingbird pollination. #parasite #Orobanchaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

I’m delighted to hear you’re enjoying my posts. Thanks for the feedback. ☺️

Photo of a shrubby with green, pinnatifid leaves and yellow, open-tubular flowers. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Let’s look at some of the hemiparasites in the family. This is Seymeria pectinata. The leafy green shoots look like any regular plant. What we don’t see are the root haustorial connections by which it steals water & minerals from its hosts. #parasite #Orobanchaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

That’s a beauty!

Tribe is the taxonomic rank between family (or subfamily) and genus.

Photo of a raceme of large, pink, tubular flowers with yellow throats. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Rehmannia (the only member of its tribe) & Lindenbergia (in another monotypic tribe) are NOT parasites. The rest of the family is hemiparasitic (=green & photosynthetic, but taking water & minerals from its host) or wholly parasitic. 📷: R. piasezkii #Orobanchaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

That pronunciation works!

Photo of a green leafy herbaceous perennial with erect shoots terminating in bracteate inflorescences. The bracts are red and showy. Flowers are tubular, greenish with red tips. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Up this week: Orobanchaceae. This family was, until the 21st century, conflated with the Scrophulariaceae, which itself was a jumbled mess. There are, however, anatomical, morphological & molecular characteristics for the family. Members are mostly parasitic. 📷: Castilleja coccinea #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Why are some plants but not others found in fossilized poo? Surely then as now, animals avoided some plants. Bad tasting, well defended. Also, some plants preserve better than others.

Photo of a cluster of black palm fruits (drupes) hanging on red, dangling stalks.

A close-up photo of a bug climbing on a plant shoot. The bug is all black with red spots.

It blows my mind that red-&-black fruits and seeds are attractive, but red-&-black insects are repellent (aposematic). In dispersal, as in life, context is everything! 📷1: Ripe fruits of Pinanga malaiana (#Arecaceae). 📷2: red-spotted stink bug, Jose Amorin CCBYNCSA2. #dispersal #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of the foliage and fruits of noni. The fruits are multiple fruits and are white when ripe. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

White fruits are relatively rare in plants. Birds don’t detect them very well because they have low chromatic contrast with background vegetation. Mammals can more easily detect white fruits if they are aromatic, like this stinky Morinda citrifolia #dispersal #Rubiaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Morinda citrifolia is the subject of tomorrow's post.

I'm now imagining a flock of scavenging fruit bats descending on a roadkill... 😱

Photo of a pair of fleshy seeds of ginkgo hanging in the tree, not yet dispersed. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

The fleshy sarcotesta of Ginkgo biloba smells really nasty. Some biologists suggest that the stench evolved to attract scavenging dinosaurs (or ancient mammals), which dispersed the seeds. 🤷‍♂️ Maybe. If so, that vile smell is the aroma of Jurassic death. 💀 #dispersal #Ginkgoaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of a hand holding a fruit cut in half. The fruit is brown and has a thick husk. The seeds are embedded in a gelatinous matrix surrounded by firm flesh.

Another part of mammal dispersal may be ethanol. It’s repellent at high concentration but attractive at low concentration. Mammals may zero in on the aroma for efficient foraging. Genipa americana (📷: Cody Hinchliff CCBYNCSA2) ripe fruits have ca. 0.5% ethanol. #dispersal #Rubiaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of fruits on a cutting board with a paring knife. Fruits are ovoid and greenish-yellow. One is cut in transverse section to show a creamy yellow interior and large seeds.

Mammals tend not to have color vision, so plants advertise with aromas. The fruits tend to be green, brown or white & require manual or buccal processing to remove a husk or large seeds. A good example: pawpaw, Asimina triloba (#Annonaceae). #dispersal #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

I remember when the stretch of the Turnpike between Wildwood and Orlando was perfumed with orange blossom...

Photos or it didn't happen. 😁

Sometimes, I'm lucky just to get a photo of the flower. Getting a pollinator in the shot would be serendipity. Bees, beetles & butterflies are easy to photograph in action, but hawkmoths, bats & (sometimes) hummingbirds are much harder. They're too fast.

Photo of leafy shoots of blackberries. Some fruits are red and unripe. Others in the same cluster are black and ripe. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Stiles also hypothesized that a “preripening” fruit color is a signal that fruits will be ripe soon. Lots of fruits, like these Rubus sp., pass through a 2nd color as they ripen from green to their final color. The red color says, “Coming Soon.” #dispersal #Rubiaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of leafy shoots bearing blue berries. A leaf subtending a cluster of berries has turned bright coppery red.

In the 1980s, E. Stiles hypothesized that plants advertise fruit with a contrasting foliar “flag.” I’ve seen this phenomenon in cultivated Berberis, like this B. aquifolium (📷: Alicia CCBYNC4). Some experiments support the hypothesis; some don’t. 🤷‍♂️ #dispersal #Berberidaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Fantastic! I gather that the I. alba "juice" was used to coagulate the rubber from the Castilla elastica. How cool.

And now the textile museum in Oaxaca is on my bucket list!

Me too!

Photo of leafy branches bearing small, vivid, red berries. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.

Helping animals find fruits: Plants advertise to bird dispersers via colorful fruit. Red fruits stand out in the visible spectrum, like these Ilex vomitoria fruits, but they may also contrast with the foliage in the UV spectrum, which birds can also see. #dispersal #Aquifoliaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

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