Saturday, March 25, 2017

Fred finds Four O'clock Family flowers

Photos and text by Fred Heath, on or shortly before 3/13/2017



The other day while walking on the tram road in Sabino above Tram Stop #1, I noticed a white flower which looked both familiar and different at the same time. I was fairly certain it was in the Four O’Clock Family (Nyctaginaceae) and was leaning towards something like a Wishbone Bush, a Four O’Clock which has white flowers, when I noticed another plant next to the first which was clearly a Trailing Four O’Clock or Windmills (Allionia incarnata). Problem solved: it was an unusual white flowered Trailing Four O’Clock. Brian Gersten pointed out that he had noticed and photographed a similar white flowered specimen a couple of years before in the same area.




Today I went back in the area and found several white flowered plants spread over several yards of roadside.




The Allionia flower is unique in another way. Although I vaguely remembered (many of my botanic recollections are vague), Debbie Bird reminded me that what appears to be a single flower on the Allionia is actually 3 separate flowers growing together. Each flower has a single white pistil (hard to pick out on the white-flowered flower) and five yellow stamens.




Today Debbie also pointed out a Trailing Four O’Clock with much smaller flowers (1/4” across instead of 1” for the more typical plants in Sabino). At first I was dubious, thinking (or not) that it was just a plant with stunted flowers from lack of water. However after looking a little more closely at the plant and with Debbie showing me that there is a small variety called A. incarnata var. incarnata as opposed to the typical sized A. incarnata var. villosa I had to agree. I took a photo of this plant, so everyone could appreciate the wonder of this variety (not to mention the botanic knowledge of Debbie).

Thanks Fred (and Debbie) for more great finds!

No comments:

Post a Comment