STRANGE PLANTS The Strange
In our search for
the strangest plant in the world we consulted well
known botanist
Marco Bleeker.
This was his reply:
"I had to think about that. The strangest plant
is perhaps a tropical
parasite from Indonesia and
Malaysia, mainly Borneo / Kalimantan.
It is called Rafflesia. It is a
flowering plant, but it is invisible,
because it consists of only a few
living cells, inside the tissue of the
host, the roots of a rainforest
tree. Only one week in the year it
forms a flower, an enormous
thing, perhaps a meter wide.
I don't have a picture of it
tho... "
Another very
strange plant is known as Titan Arum or The corpse
Flower. This is the largest known flower in the
world. The height of this flower can span over a meter
in captivity and can exceed this size in its native
environment in the Sumatra rainforests. What's more
strange about this flower is the fact that it only blooms
once every 12 to 37 years. When it finally does
bloom, a large pointed flower shoots straight up and then
opens, looking a bit like a giant pitcher plant.
This flower smells like a combination of rotten fish and
burning sugar so as to attract a certain type of insect
known as the Sumatran Sweat Bee to pollinate the
flower. Once the flower dies off, large red fruits
appear on the plant, then it dies.
Below are images
of the Titan Arum.
Yet another strange plant is
the African Witch Weed. This plant is native to
Africa but it has been reported to live in certain areas
of America. This strange plant has about a week to
live once it sprouts, unless it can find the nearby root
system of another plant. It sends out an enzyme
scout feeler to search for roots and if it can find
another plant's root system, it will grow a rootlike organ
that will quickly tunnel through the soil and interface
with the other plant's roots. It even feeds the
other plant a root growth hormone so the roots will feed
the Witch Weed more
effectively. Once the Witch
Weed does all this, it will live a long and happy
life. The other plant will live long but it won't be
happy;, it won't grow very large and will not be able to
reproduce because the Witch Weed takes so much of the root
system from it.
The Coryanthes orchid
is a
very strange plant. Its flower takes the shape of a
bucket. It then fills the bucket with a clear
liquid. There is a certain type of wasp in the
Coryanthes orchid's environment that uses the slippery, waxy
substance on the outside of the flower for its mating
ritual. This substance sometime causes the wasp
to slip and fall into the bucket of clear liquid. With
its wings now soaking wet, the wasp cannot fly out of the
bucket. Its only choice is to crawl outside through a
narrow tunnel in the base of the flower. At the end of
the tunnel is an arm that reaches out and grabs the wasp and
holds it still while it deposits pollen on the wasp.
This action takes about 10 to 15 minutes. And then the
bee crawls out of the flower to dry off, fly away and get
caught by another Coryanthes orchid to receive the
pollen.
The next strange plant in
our focus here is not a plant at all really, it's a
fungus. This particular mushroom is called the Cap
Throwing Fungus. During the mid morning, when the
sun is just right, it blows its top sending spores into a
very wide area. This fungus is also strangely smart
; it knows where the sun is. If fact, it bends
itself to follow the path of the sun. Further, this
mushroom knows the smartest place to throw its spores--a
wide clear area where the winds, animals and insects can
carry off the spores. This is indeed strange.
By John
McMahon, webmaster@thestrangedotcom.com