I'm not a botanist, so I hope you will forgive my mistake...and perhaps you can learn with me. Here's what happened. I had remembered that in Coyote Brush, male and female flowers occur on separate plants. But when I took the picture that I showed last night, I couldn't remember how to tell the different types of flowers apart. So I looked around for clues and found this:
I said, "Okay, I can see that the shorter yellowish flowers are producing pappus." Pappus is the white fluffy material that (often) carries seeds. [When you blow seeds off a dandelion, you're blowing on the pappus (with a seed at the bottom) which then floats away.]
Until now, I have associated pappus with seeds, which are produced by female flowers, so I thought these shorter yellowish flowers were female. And I reasoned that therefore the longer whitish flowers (in last night's photo) were male.
Then today I noticed a lot of insect activity around some Coyote Brush plants — e.g., here's a nice fly (and an ant), feeding on white flowers.
When I looked closely, I realized that there was pappus associated with the white flowers (see below for an example):
So now I realized I had a problem. A few days ago I had noticed pappus on yellow flowers, and today I observed pappus on white flowers. So...which flowers are male and which are female?
I had to do some more research, and discovered that the white flowers are female and the yellow flowers are male. They *both* produce pappus, but note that the pappus is longer in the females and shorter in the males.
I hadn't realized that some male flowers produce pappus, but now I know, and you do, too!
Since pappus is
associated with seeds and can play a role in seed dispersal, it raises
the question of why male flowers also produce pappus? I don't know the answer,
but let me know if you've heard of an explanation (or can think of
one!).
Here are two more pictures: a closeup of male Coyote Brush flowers, and a handsome striped fly on a male flower:
1 comment:
It turns out that your error led to a more interesting post than the original. Life is like that.
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