The Strange
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.
 

The Titan Arum or Corpse Flower. The biggest
                      flower in the world!
The Titan
                    Arum or Corpse Flower. The biggest flower in the
                    world!




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
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



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