A photo with a POV looking up into the crown with dozens of prop roots dropping downward fro the larger branches. The bark is smooth and white. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

A photo with a POV looking up into the crown with dozens of prop roots dropping downward fro the larger branches. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Ficus benghalensis, the banyan, produces the most amazing aerial roots, which drop from the branches & eventually penetrate the soil. They are contractile roots, which grow and then contract, ratcheting down & locking the tree to the earth. #Moraceae #root #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of the base of a palm with a mass of dark, thick roots with red root tips emerging from the stem above the soil surface and growing downward. A small garden sign identifies the palm as C. harlandii. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

A photo looking up into a very tall cone of aerial stilt roots. The crown of the pandan is obscured by nearby palm leaves. A baseball cap provides scale. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

To see prop roots on a larger scale, look to the palms and pandans. 📷1: Clinostigma harlandii, a palm. 📷1: Pandanus sp (to get an idea of the scale of this giant, check out the green cap in the lower left). #Arecaceae #Pandanaceae #root #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

More rooty goodness coming at you all week.

Close-up photo of the bases of corn stalks. Adventitious roots emerge from nodes above the soil surface and grow downward. Roots from lower nodes have penetrated the soil, while those from upper nodes have not yet touched the soil.

This week is devoted to #roots we can see, like these from corn/maize (Zea mays;📷: 305 Seahill CCBYND2). Corn is famous for its prop roots that emerge from the stem above the soil line. When they penetrate the soil, they brace the main stalk. Structural engineering! #Poaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

I must add ‘America’ to my peony wishlist. Good to know it does well here. It has a Landscape Award from the American Peony Society.

Four red single-flowered peonies above fine foliage.

Peony ‘Merry Mayshine’
What cultivar is yours?

The ONLY good thing about our lack of rain is that the flowers are unspoiled.

Hauya elegans (📷: Tony Rodd CCBYNCSA2) is a tree from Mexico & Central America. It has classic #Onagraceae flowers: long hypanthium tube, reflexed sepals, capitate stigma (like Fuchsia et al.), inferior ovary. And it has color-changing flowers that start white and age to dark pink. #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

A photo of a shrub with bright pink flowers. The leafy tips of the branches are bright red.

A close-up photo of fingers cradling two red, leafy stems. The axillary fruits are immersed in the stem.

Gongylocarpus fruticulosus, from islands off Baja California Sur, Mexico, is a shrub with axillary flowers & ovaries so inferior that the fruits are immersed in the stem, like in Cactaceae. 🤯 📷1: Gemina Garland-Lewis. 📷2: jrebman. both CCBYNC4 #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of an old, dead, dried plant with axillary seed capsules clustered around the base.

Taraxia subacaulis (formerly, Oenothera triloba) (📷: Cecelia Alexander CC0) is a rosette plant. After it dies, the dried capsules in the leaf axils open when wet, and the seeds are dispersed by raindrops (ombrohydrochory). #dispersal #raindrops #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
2/2

Close-up photo of an opened capsule with several seeds, each with tufts of hairs, like the seeds of milkweed. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Seed dispersal in the family is by many means. Seeds with tufts of hair (as in Epilobium canum subsp. latifolium) or wings are wind-dispersed; for those species with berries (like Fuchsia), animals consume berries and disperse the seeds 💩. #dispersal
1/2

Somehow I missed it. 😂

Photo of a leafy shoot bearing four white flowers. The center of each flower is dark red, the stamens are nearly exserted, and a large capitate stigma extends beyond the flower on a long style.

Photo looking down at my boots. My jeans and boots are smeared with white pollen.

In the Southwest, Chylismia claviformis (📷: Matt Berger CCBY4) carpets the desert floor… so much so that my boots & jeans collected lots of pollen as I walked among the plants. This species is pollinated by bees—and maybe passersby! #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

I agree. FYOO-shuh is fine for the color, but an epinym should be pronounced so that the surname is recognizable.
Along the same lines:
HALES-ee-ah, not ha-LEEZ-ee-ah
and
STOKES-ea-ah, not sto-KEEZ-ee-ah

Fuchsia (after Leonhart Fuchs; say “FOOK-see-ah”) in the Americas are hummingbird pollinated. In New Zealand, the native species attract nectar-feeding birds (but they’re rare→pollination is rare). This is F. x colensoi (F. excorticata × F. perscandens), a natural hybrid. #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of a leafy shoot with four pendulous, red, tubular flowers. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

The pollinators of Fuchsia in the Americas are hummingbirds. This Fuchsia (probably F. triphylla), observed in the Dominican Republic, has pendulous, red, nectar-rich flowers—perfect for hummingbirds. #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of a moth probing a not-yet-fully-open, white flower. Another flower bud is in the background.

The long, tubular hypanthium holds nectar, the reward for pollinators. Oenothera species are dusk- or night-blooming, which is perfect for moths, like this sphinx moth (Hyles lineata) visiting opening buds of Oenothera sp. 📷: Lon&Queta CCBYNCSA2 #teammoth #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Yes, another color changer! Yes, the pigment is an anthocyanin (don’t know which one(s)). That’s about all I can say. 🤷🏻

Yes, I know CPBBD. I've been a guest on his podcast. Joey does great work. He has a book out, too.

Photo of a yellow flower, partially closed, viewed from the side. The long hypanthium tube is indicated by a text and a bracket, as is the inferior ovary. The length of the tube is ca. 3x the diamter of the flower.

The sepals, petals & stamens are borne on the rim of the hypanthium, which is the cup- or tube-like fusion of sepals, petals & stamens. The ovary is inferior (below the attachment of the sepals & petals). 📷: Oenothera macrocarpa subsp. oklahomensis Sonnia Hill CCBY2 #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of a low-growing, herbaceous plant with 3 large flowers, with characteristics as described in the post. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

This week: Onagraceae, which are herbs to shrubs (rarely trees), opposite leaves, usually 4-merous flowers with an inferior ovary & a well-developed floral tube. The calyx is reflexed, stamens 8, pollen with viscin threads. Oenothera avita subsp. californica #Onagraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Photo of a hand holding a leafy shoot with several long, tubular flowers. Some flowers are pale pink, but other, older flowers are dark red. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Quisqualis indica has white flowers that open in the evening, but by the next day, they turn dark red. Linnaeus, when he saw the dried specimen, supposedly didn’t know the direction of the color change. The genus name loosely translates to “What's what?” #Combretaceae #color #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

I think you’re thinking of Albizia julibrissin. It’s an invasive species in the Carolinas. It is in the Legume family (Fabaceae), so unrelated to Combretum. Similar kind of stamen flowers though.

Photo of a leafy shoot bearing a large panicle of opposite, distichous branches bearing clusters of stamen flowers (no visible petals, just showy filaments). The filaments are green in fresh flowers, but they turn orange in older flowers. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Yet another way: In Combretum fruticosum, the color change is in the stamens (the filaments, mostly). They change from greenish yellow to orange as they age, & the orange flowers are retained as a beacon to pollinators. #Combretaceae #color #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Please do and report back!

Photo of an isolated, tight cluster of flowers. Each flower has four, short, white petals and a prominent nectar disk, which turns from white to dark maroon in older flowers. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Yet another way to signal which flowers are worth visiting while still attracting pollinators: In Ludwigia suffruticosa, the nectary at the apex of the inferior ovary turns from yellow in fresh, virgin flowers to dark red in older, pollinated flowers. #Onagraceae #color #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

A cluster of flowers backed by fine, bipinnate leaves. There are masses of flowers, some with the white banner visible. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Same cluster of flowers but with the old flowers (with closed banner petals) removed. There are only about four flowers remaining in a very sparse cluster. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Here’s how retaining the old flowers maximizes the floral display in Delonix regia. The first photo shows a cluster of flowers as they are displayed on the tree. The second photo shows the same cluster but with old, pollinated flowers removed. See the difference?
2/2

Photo of a single flower face-on, with five small, red sepals and five, red, clawed petals. The dorsal petal is unlike the other petals: It’s white with a yellowish base and spotted and streaked with red. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Photo of a single flower face-on. The dorsal petal has curled in on itself from the side, so that the white face is not showing. The other petals are still open. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Delonix regia has an interesting way of signifying to pollinators (birds, in its natural habitat, Madagascar) that some flowers are not worth visiting. The white banner petal is exposed in fresh flowers, but the petal folds in on itself. #Fabaceae #color #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
1/2

Yes. Retaining old/pollinated flowers contributes to the overall display & attractiveness (to pollinators). The color change lets pollinators know which flowers to visit and which to ignore. That's this week's theme. 😊

Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the ...

Amidst everything else, the Trump regime has quietly killed off the U.S. Forest Service 🌲

“One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests… just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.”

www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...

Photo of a leafy shoot bearing four, white, funnel-shaped flowers. In fresh flowers, the throat is yellow, but it darkens to orange in older flowers. A bee sits on the edge of one flower. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

There are other ways that flowers change. In Cordia boissieri, only the throat of the tubular flower changes. The throat starts yellow and ages to orange. #Boraginaceae #color #Botany 🌾🧪🌱