Also posted at Sentient Meat blog
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| Avonia recurvata ssp buderiana, new addition to Sentient Meat container garden grown and sold by Woody Minnich of Cactus Data Plants |
Which plants bewitch you? Which traits arouse the most passion? Even if pressed, I can't narrow my favorite plants down to just 10 or even 100, but I can tell you which traits amaze me. I am endlessly fascinated by plants which don't look like plants... or in some cases, don't resemble living things from the planet Earth.
Avonia buderiana is just such a plant. Its tiny branches reach upwards in haphazard, coral shapes (coralliform) covered with bizarre, overlapping, white, papery scales. These scales are actually modified leaf parts (stipules) which protect the tender branches and minute green leaves from heat, sun, and dehydration. Some Avonia live in quartz sands where their papery white scales blend visually with their habitat. All Avonia are dwarfs; A buderiana stems reach at most 80mm or scarcely over 3 inches in height.
The ephemeral white flowers sprout from the tips of the stems, usually 1 per stem. They open briefly in the heat of the day but are usually closed like tiny, out-worldly pincers.
Avonia buderiana grows wild in Helskloof, Richtersveld, in the Northern Cape of South Africa.
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| Dirt road and horizon, showing arid habitat Helskloof, Richtersveld, Northern Cape, South Africa photo by Sakkie on Panoramio |
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Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park, South Africa official site
Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park, South Africa official site
Court, Doreen. (Third Edition, 2010). Succulent Flora of Southern Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Struik Publishers. ISBN-10: 1770075879. ISBN-13: 978-1770075870.
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| Photo from Spain plant vendor Cactus Serrano www.cactuserrano.es |
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| View from Maerpoort with Rosyntjieberg in the background, Richtersveld National Park Photo by Lex Hes, courtesy of, and copyright, South Africa Tourism, a department of the government of South Africa. |
2 comments:
Those are so cute. They remind me in the last picture of this thing we used to call a chinese something...anyway...you would put one index finger in each end and the more you pulled, the tighter it had gotten and would not let you go. The pattern on the flowers in the last picture remind me of that.
Hi Kandake CimCiptivan, me too! the overlapping scales remind me of a Chinese finger puzzle, especially when the flowers are open, making the stems look like the ends are open like the finger puzzles.
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