Botany Photo of the Day

Continuing the BPotD series on Australian plants, number four is shared with us by Margaret Morgan of Sydney, Australia. Margaret's previously contributed some photographs of Australian plants to BPotD. Don't forget to visit her weblog, Growing Passion, though I imagine updates will remain infrequent over the next month while she completes a Plant Science Internship at the National Herbarium in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (I'm hoping to read her account of the internship, one day).

Margaret has written about the trigger plant on her weblog, so I'll simply quote her regarding the reason for the common name: “The column extending from the centre of the flower to the right is a fusion of two stamens with the style. When an insect lands on the flower, the column is triggered and flicks across the insect. It can be reset a number of times.” This mechanism both bathes the insect with pollen and potentially transfers pollen (from a different individual) to the stigmatic surface of the insect-slapping flower. Wikipedia has an extensive article on the pollination mechanism of triggerplants. A few more factoids: the touch response by the flower can occur in as little as 15 milliseconds, and the action takes place via turgor pressure.

An unrelated tidbit of information gleaned from the Wikipedia article is that the genus Stylidium is considered protocarnivorous.

Read a bit more about the southeast Australian Stylidium productum via the New South Wales Flora Online.

Photography / biology resource link: After viewing some of the images from yesterday's resource link, I noticed there was a local (to me) microphotographer in the batch. Ron Neumeyer of Delta, BC is that person – visit his gallery of microphotography images!