Well-behaved plants live in wild Borneo

Probably the most interesting group of plants for the majority of people are the carnivorous plants because of their behaviour with insects. Wait, because of the insects’ behaviour with these plants! Well, in any case we must all agree that carnivorous plants were a wild invention of Nature. 

Different growth stages of pitchers in the QBG carnivorous plants glasshouse

My opinion about them became even wilder when I found an old article about a Bornean pitcher plant (Nepenthes bicalcarata), which relationship with insects is absolutely unexpected for a carnivorous plant. So first, let me remind you some aspects about the biology of these plants: pitcher plants are known by getting nutrients from insects as a supplement. Their strategy is to attract insects using a trap, a modified leaf (the pitcher), which is full of enzymes and digestive liquid where the nutrients can be absorbed. 

In Nepenthaceae, the leaves are differentiated into pitchers and the petioles are the photosynthetic part of the plant, having the function of the leaf but not being a true leaf

The insects are attracted by the extra-floral nectaries and often fell in, drowning in the fluid. However this particular species, Nepenthes bicalcarata, nests ants (Camponotus schmitzi) in their swollen and hollow tendrils. Strangely, these ants forage on the inner side of the pitcher, crawling over the slippery walls without difficulty and even swimming in the pitcher fluid to forage and feed on the insect prey’s of pitchers. So, what is the advantage for the plant on having other insects eating the food that they get alone by using their own pitchers? The ants only collect large prey insects – all the other small insects are digested and absorbed by the plant. Big preys take long time to digest, and this would end up on putrefaction and rotten pitchers, which is obviously something not very healthy for a pitcher plant to have. So these pitcher plants get rid of the large preys by offering them to their friends - ants. “Wow!” – I can hear you guys whisper. No worries, I whispered the same – these plants are really something!

Picture of Nepenthes calcarata sourced from the magical internet. It is possible to see the nests that the plant produces in the tendrils, as well as the "horns" that are very characteristic of this species

Even though this is all undoubtedly very interesting, the flowers of Nepenthes do also tell a story. Nepenthaceae, as all the members of Caryophyllales order have no petals, so their perianth has only one single whorl made out of sepals. The flowers are also easily recognizable by being dioecious (meaning that sexes are separated in different flowers, male and female) and tetramerous. Of course that a carnivorous plant also needs insects for pollination, so they do produce a lot of nectar to attract a lot of insects. Some will end up in the pitcher-insect-hell, but others will end up licking the sepals which are fully loaded with sweet nectar. It’s a matter of luck for insects I suppose.

Typical inflorescence of Nepenthes, a racemose with paired tetramerous flowers, each one subtended by one bract

Another very interesting fact about the Nepenthes are the male flowers, which have all the stamens (ranging usually from 4 to 24 in number) fused together in a structure which botanists decided to call “synandrium” (syn meaning fused and andrium referring to the male part).

Roses, my Lord

Once upon a time, in a kingdom of its name Portugal, there was a Queen known by her kindness and good heart. Queen Isabel of Portugal was devoted to the poor and sick. Her generosity was very popular but her husband, a very good ruler, considered charity to be of high cost to the kingdom and forbid her to do so. One day the King – El-Rei D. Dinis, found the Queen in one of her charity actions, giving money and bread to the poor. Afraid of the King’s punishment, Queen Isabel hid the bread in her lap, and the King asked: “Where are you going?”, she said: “I’m going to the monastery to decorate the altars”. Distrustful, the King asks to see what she is bringing in her lap, she replies saying “Roses, my lord”. Not happy with this answer, the King charges the Queen of lying as it was impossible to have roses in January. Therefore, he forced her to open the mantle to show what she was hiding. When she opened the mantle, the most beautiful roses fell from her lap – the hidden bread was turned into roses. The King was speechless and apologized his Queen. The story ran the whole kingdom and Queen Isabel of Portugal was proclaimed Saint by her people, and officially by the Pope 3 centuries later, in 1614. 

El-rei D. Dinis and his Queen, Isabel of Portugal

This legend is still very popular in Portugal and Queen Isabel is still much loved by the Portuguese after all these centuries, so I decided to share this with you. Of course this story is not coming alone without some hard-core botanizing, so make yourselves comfortable and get ready for what really matters!

I must admit that roses are not my type of flower – at least the ornamental roses; but they are an important group for the flower evolution point of view and that is enough to make me want to talk about it!

When talking about roses, maybe most people think about love, romantic stuff, Valentine’s day, maybe gardening or perfumes, but I have to be honest – the first thing crossing my mind is hypanthium. Not very romantic at all, right? But yeah, what is the real meaning of that weeeird word? And why do I think about hypanthia when thinking about roses? 

Roses from QSBG Rose Garden, Thailand

Roses gave the name of one of the most important groups of plants: the Rosids, one of the most successful groups of Angiosperms, representing around 25% of all angiosperm species - that is a big group! Certainly with so many species represented it is not easy to group all characters together, but there is one character that is frequently found and also a key morphological character. That is the hypanthium. The hypanthium is a cup-shaped structure (sometimes tubular) that elevates some floral organs. 

It is basically an elongation of the receptacle of the flower, and this lead to a lot of discussion in terms of the morphology of the flower as well as the naming of floral structures. With the elongation of the receptacle, sepals, petals and stamens are lifted up, and this causes confusion, “Is this a superior or inferior ovary?” Well, usually is neither both – it’s a half-inferior ovary!!

Ovary position related with the origin of the hypanthium

The evolution of this structure is thought to be on the origin of the inferior ovaries, a character found in more derived groups, useful as an extra protection to what really matters – the future babies. So basically the hypanthium is the evolutionary link between inferior and superior ovaries. Cool, uh?

New year, new stories

Dear all, I am back!

I hope you had a great Christmas and that 2011 ended the best way possible. I wish you all the best for 2012 and that you can make all your wishes to come true. I also hope you are you ready for more interesting stories as I am ready to tell more! But before that I will reveal the enigma that I posted before I leave.

The husbands are the stamens and the wives are the carpels. They share the same house, meaning that stamens and carpels are found in the same flower. The child is the seed formed and the rooms downstairs are the number of inferior ovaries. The husbands hugging the wives represent the stamen-petal tube. Mistresses living alone means that there are female flowers (without stamens). The city center here means a lot of houses, a lot of flowers, so the flowers are grouped in crowded inflorecences with both sexes in the center and female flowers in the periphery. So we have crowded inflorescences with central flowers with 5 stamens forming stamen-petal tubes, two carpels, two inferior ovaries and only on seed formed.

Any guess? This is Asteraceae, the family of sunflowers and daisies! Congratulations for those who found out! =)

Please be alert – new stories will be published very soon!

A wee enigma as Christmas present

Dear readers, 

As I will be traveling for the next weeks I won’t be able to post any story, so I decided to challenge you with a little charade… Maybe easy for some of you, hard for others, but you should give it a try!
I wish you all a Christmas full of love and all my best wishes for the New Year!

Now, L’énigme :


In this crowded flower city…

…Marriages are of five husbands with two wives. Husbands and wives live together in the same house, sharing the room upstairs; they are only allowed to have one child, sleeping in a single room downstairs, next to an unoccupied room. Husbands hug together surrounding their wives.
Mistresses don’t get married; they live in big houses with open view, outside the crowded city center. Mistresses always share a double room with another woman.



Will be waiting for your guess

See you in 2012! =)

Sacred-lotus? HELP!

How could I live in South-East Asia without mentioning anything about Lotus?

The Lotus flower is one of the most popular flowers in South-East Asia, it is the national plant of India and Vietnam, and is also deeply related with the Thai culture – it is present in art, traditions, food but most important of all, in their religion. These flowers have a great symbolic value for the Buddhists as it is present in Buddha’s life in many episodes. The first episode is even before his birth, when Queen Maha Maya had a dream of a white elephant holding a white a lotus flower in its trunk and walked around her three times. This dream was the prophecy of the birth of Buddha. Another famous episode tells that when Buddha was born he did seven steps and at each step a lotus flower appeared on the ground. Also Buddha is many times represented sitting on a lotus blossom while reaching the enlightenment as lotus blossoms symbolize full enlightenment.

Lotuses have a handful of meanings in Buddhism and the different meanings depend on the colour of the flowers (white, red, blue, pink, purple and gold) but also on the developmental stage (closed lotus, growing lotus and blooming lotus). Among the many different meanings, lotuses usually come associated with purity and divine birth, especially the white lotus.

I could dedicate an entire post explaining the importance and the different meanings of sacred-lotuses in both Buddhism and Hinduism, but that is not my aim. Lotuses have their own story to tell…

For many years the true taxonomical identity of lotus was hidden, I mean they are not what they appeared to be and their looks fooled botanists for long time. Only on late 80’s – early 90’s with the new molecular techniques botanists found out the scandalous truth: lotuses are not related to water lilies! Water lilies belong to the Nymphaeaceae (Nymphaeales order), a basal angiosperm family; lotuses belong to the Nelumbonaceae (Proteales order) which is not only a different family, but also placed in a much derived group. In conclusion: lotuses (Nelumbo) are today considered to be more closely related with sycamores (Platanus) rather than water-lilies (Nymphaea), as they are placed in the same order (Proteales).

It is not surprising that experts were deceived by the lotuses morphology. Characters as massive flowers, indefinite number of petals in a spiral position and ascidiate carpels are usually associated with basal angiosperms. This added with the adaptations to the aquatic environment shared by both groups made botanists conclude that they were very closely related. Not the case at all! All these similarities were not evidence of a shared evolutionary history, but of a convergent evolution.

Nelumbo or Sacred-lotus (left) vs. Nymphaea or Water-lilly (right)

 But there is no need to despair – after this post there are no more reasons to mistake a lotus flower with a water-lily. The most conspicuous difference between these two is the carpel, which in Nelumbo is an expanded receptacle that contains the seeds when mature. There are also marked differences in the stamens, which are laminar, or in other words leaf-like in Nymphaea (another common character of basal angiosperms). In Nelumbo the stamens form a ring at the base and are filamentous. Finally, it should also be mentioned that even though they are both aquatic, Nymphaea always has floating leaves and in Nelumbo they are above the water, as well as the flowers.

Different floral stages of Nelumbo nucifera (Sacred-lotus)

 But although the taxonomy is solved, the confusion is still reigning amongst common mortals and water-lilies are still called lotuses by many people (including Buddhists). So let’s see Nelumbo nucifera is the well known “sacred-lotus” and has pink petals, however in Buddhism the different colours of the lotus are associated with different meanings. The other two species of lotus (N. lutea and N. pentapetala) are endemic to the American continent, so they can’t be related with Buddhist traditions. This means that the only lotus that can be associated with Buddhism is pink! So where do the other colours come from? Nymphaea of course! The number of species of Nymphaea is much superior and the colours of the flowers are also very variable.

Colour diversity in Nymphaea

 Confused? Yeap me too, so I will leave you with this: Are the different colours associated with water-lilies instead of the sacred-lotus? Or are the colours symbolic variations of the sacred-lotus?

Hopping that some of you have a clue that helps to clarify this!

A Mid-Night Horror Story

Imagine you’re walking around in the forest at night and suddenly you find a pile of thin bones, you look up and you see a tree with dangling sickles and bats flying over… Creepy, uh? Well, maybe if you look a little bit closer the bones are not real bones, they are fallen branches and there are no sickles, they are just the fruits of this bat-pollinated tree – but that was scary enough! Today’s story is about the “Midnight Horror”!

The midnight horror tree, Oroxylum indicum, is a very popular tree in Southeast Asia due to their weird appearance, but despite of this, there is no reason to fear it - in fact most of the plant is used for medicinal purposes (leaves, seeds, bark and roots).

Oroxylum indicum. On the left side: the tree with hanging fruits; on the right side: the flowers.

Oroxylum indicum belongs to the Bignoniaceae family, a family with tropical distribution, belonging to the problematic Lamiales order. Lamiales encomprises some closely related and big families such as Lamiaceae, Acanthaceae, Oleaceae, Gesneriaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Plantaginaceae, Verbenaceae… The relationships between these families are not well understood and in many cases the morphological characters are not strong enough to determine the families’ delimitation, especially floral morphology. The typical Lamiales flowers have a well developed and basally fused calyx, a monosymmetric bilabiate corolla (upper and lower lips) and a superior bicarpellate ovary.

*Wow, botanists’ sophisticated dialect alert!*

Ok, ok… It is easier if I show some pictures, but what I want to show you here are the fluctuations on the number of stamens.

Typical Lamiales flowers. On the left: Lamiaceae, upper lip formed by 2 fused petals and lower lip formed by 3 fused petals; Dashed line representing the monosymmetric corolla. On the right side: Orobanchaceae, upper and lower lips fused forming the corolla tube; the calyx is fused on the base. 

In Lamiales the androecium varies from one to five stamens, including reductions of stamens into staminodes (sterile stamens) which are not well understood. This character is highly variable, and in my opinion is due to the current evolution of the group. This means that the characters for families’ circumscription are not well established yet, giving this morphological fluctuation as a consequence.

However, Bignoniaceae, has some characters restricted to the family, which makes it easy to spot in the field. The flowers in this family are very big, colourful and showy – hard not to see. They usually also have big nectarines in the base of the flower, releasing a strong and sweet fragrance – no wonder they are pollinated by big animals such as bats! Usually they have 4 fertile stamens and 1 unfertile stamen (staminode), but this species in particular has 5 fertile stamens and no staminodes. I have also found Bignoniaceae flowers with more variation, but as I explained before, I believe the presence or absence of staminodes is possibly related with a transitional evolutionary state. The stigma (the female part which receives the pollen) is usually wet and relatively broad.

Typical Bignoniaceae flower with 2 pairs of stamens (long and short) and one staminode

 The essential vegetative character of the Lamiales is the simple-opposite leaves, but luckily Bignoniaceae has compound opposite leaves, and this makes our lives easier! Bignoniaceae are usually represented by trees, shrubs and are also well represented in tropical America by climbers, having the terminal leaflet differentiated into a tendril.

So don’t forget, whenever you see a tree or climber with big showy flowers with the petals fused into a tube, check for the leaves, if they are compound, you probably found a Bignoniaceae! In the case of the midnight horror tree, they have big white or whitish flowers, blooming and releasing a sweet scent at night – all perfect characters for efficient bat pollination.

Viola’s love story

Some of you might already know that my favourite flowers are probably Viola’s, however I never did any work or wrote anything about them – to be honest I don’t even know why they are my favourites. Personally, they do have a special meaning to me as Viola riviniana was the first plant I identified alone using a flora – this is a mark in a botanist’s life!

Viola riviniana

Viola’s have the cutest flowers on earth, and although this is a very personal opinion, many people had similat thoughts. Many of us know Viola’s as ornamental flowers – in fact their beauty also attracted gardeners since early 19^th century. Many varieties of pansies (hybrids between Viola tricolor with other Viola species) were produced since then and today we have countless cultivars of the original pansy, but I do prefer the wild Viola tricolor. There is nothing like having wild Viola’s “staring” at us – they are lovely! To start with, I have to say that the Portuguese common name for Viola is “amor-perfeito”, meaning “perfect love”, but it is not only a Portuguese thing to think that Viola’s are so deeply related with love… Or is it a Portuguese thing to give attention to Viola’s love clues?

They are also famous by their sweet odor, especially Viola odorata, which is used in perfume industry. Not happy with being beautiful and fragrant they are also full of goodness! The entire plant is edible, and in Europe, violets are used to make popular spring salads. They also have being used with medicinal purposes in many cultures and for the most variable reasons since ancient times. Europeans, Asians and also Native Americans used to produce traditional medicines with Viola’s leaves and flowers. Homer said once that Athenians used Viola tricolor to temper the anger, but it is also used with many other medicinal purposes, including pain relief and heart problems. It is clear for me – it is used to cure love diseases! And in fact, Ancient Greeks considered the violet a symbol of fertility and love, using them in love potions... Can't be a coincidence.

Viola’s are mainly pollinated by bees, and this is easy to understand by looking at the flower features. The colors are mainly purple, but also yellow and white; the lines in the petals act as landing lines, indicating to the pollinator where the nectar can be found. One of the most characteristic features of Viola flowers is the presence of the spur – a structure that produces and stores the nectar. The pollinator must follow the landing lines to find the nectar in the spur, and by doing so, the pollen gets attached to its body – pollination succeeds again! The leaves of Viola are usually heart-shaped (how adorable is that?!), at least in the base of the plant.

 To finish with, I just want to make a small art reference I found about these loving flowers. Viola’s also inspired many artists (no wonder!), but I won’t bother you with a list of famous classic pieces. I just want to share this last curiosity about “Shakespeare in Love”, have you ever seen this film? It tells a fiction story of Shakespeare while writing his famous “Romeo and Juliet”, inspired by his muse, a woman named Viola – coincidence? In any case, if roses are for some the flowers of passion for some, violas are surely synonyms of pure & sincere love after this post.