Greenhouse plant in Himalaya (Rheum nobile)

Extreme rhubarb: The plant that grows a greenhouse

• 22 October 2013 by Henry Nicholls

THE foothills of the Himalayas are lush and verdant. But the higher you go, the shorter the plants get. Above the treeline, at around 4000 metres above sea level, conditions are extreme. It's cold and windy, the steep slopes consist mostly of shattered rocks rather than soil, and from above comes an invisible barrage of ultraviolet light. The plants here are tiny and cling closely to the mountainsides, barely peeking above the scree-clad slopes. Every now and then, though, a towering pale form looms, ghostlike, out of the mist.

When the botanist Joseph Hooker caught his first glimpse of this peculiar plant in the 1840s, he was "quite at a loss to conceive what it could be". From a base of normal green leaves rises a hollow column made of overlapping pale-yellow leaves. The columns can grow nearly 2 metres high, dwarfing the other vegetation around them.

Full copy of New Scientist article: http://www.jansalpines.com/books/rheum_nobile/pdf/NewScientistRheum_nobile.pdf

World's largest cashew tree (5 acres)

The world’s largest cashew tree know as Maior Cajueiro do Mundo( thousand year old)

June 12, 2013 1 Comment

The world’s largest cashew tree know as Maior Cajueiro do Mundo( thousand year old)
In 1994, Maior Cajueiro do Mondo located in Natal, Brazil.entered the Guinness Book
of Records for the world’s largest cashew tree.
This gaint tree has grown from an amalgamation of two genetic tissues Such tissues
grow the branches of the tree to outwrds rather than upward direction.
this cashew tree is located in Pirangi do Norte , Rio Grande do Norte , Brazil.
It covers an area between 7,300 sq meters and 8,400 sq meters or roughly five acres.
Having the size of 70 normally sized cashew trees.


The beauty of this tree is that it produces about 60,000 pieces of cashew fruit
each year. As for some people it may come as a surprise that a cashew nut
is not the fruit but a single nut is attached to the bottom of the fruit .

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Tags: Largest cashew tree maior cajueiro do mondo 

FACTRANGE

http://www.factrange.com/the-worlds-largest-cashew-tree-know-as-maior-cajueiro-do-mundo-thousand-year-old/

Aristolochia platensis (the Darth Vader Flower)

The Darth Vader flower, also known as Aristolochia salvador platensis [is that A. slvador var/f/subsp platensis?]

Aristolochia gigantia (Pelican Flower)

The spectacular Aristolochia gigantia is flowering now in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens and it's bigger and better than ever! The huge, spectacular display is not to be missed. Watch out though - it gets a bit pongy in the afternoons! Find out about visiting Kew here: http://on.fb.me/14LpX8x — The spectacular (and a bit smelly) Aristolochia gigantia! (3 photos)

Other plants for the (Proposed) Cabinet of Botanical Curiosities

This list is from the post I did some time ago on Talking Plants, just to keep these ideas in the same place as the others.

Big ones
Amorphophallus titanum; Rafflesia sp.; Victoria amazonica/cruziana; largest orchid, cactus etc. flower; fungi (basidiomycetes)...
Also Aristolochia gigantia (Pelican Flower).

Little ones

Wolfsia; Nymphaea thermarum (alongside Victoria); smallest orchid flower; cryptogams (models of algae/desmid, fungi and bryophytes)...

Fast ones

Stylidium (Trigger plant; also stilt plants from WA); moss capsule; that Cornus that does something interesting...

Others

Welwitschia mirabilis; Dracena draco (Dragon-blood Tree); Jade vine (vivid blue-green flowers); carnivorous plants, odd cacti and succulents...

Hydnora africana, one weird plant

Something worth writing about, one day. Thanks Alex Chapman (via Facebook) for posting the image and caption, plus this Encyclopedia of Life link: http://eol.org/pages/5514361/overview

Jim Croft, also via Facebook, says: Hydnoraceae. Near Piperaceae and Aristolochiaceae. Who would have imagined such a thing?

Jade Vine and Flame of the Forest, together

 If you are going Jade Vine, you had better do Flame of the Forest as well. The contrast of the similar flowers in vibrant jade and scarlet is fantastic if you can pull it off.
Jim Croft (Facebook, 10 January 2003).

Cave dwelling plant

http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0107-hatheway-pilea-cavernicola.html 

Botanists discover cave-dwelling plant By:Alex Hatheway January 07, 2013 Flowers of a new species from the nettle family known only from caves, Pilea cavernicola, where it grows in very low light conditions. Photo by: Alex Monro. The South China Karst region resembles a lost world with its stone forests and towering limestone formations that look like petrified skyscrapers. Standing at the edge of one of the region’s many vine-covered gorges, you could picture an apatosaurus lifting its head above the mist that blankets the gorge floor. Of course, that would be impossible, but what botanists recently found in the region was only slightly less surprising (to botanists). Near the back of a limestone cave, pink flowers bloomed on a newly discovered nettle that could survive on just a tiny fraction of the sunlight other plants receive. As Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park said, "life will find a way." When botanist and nettle expert Alex Monro heard about the cave nettles from his Chinese colleague Wei Yi-Gang, he didn’t believe it. "I thought that he was mis-translating a Chinese word into English," Munro says. "When we stepped into our first cave, Yangzi cave, I was spell-bound. It had an eerie moonscape look to it and all I could see were clumps of plants in the nettle family growing in very dark condition." The botanists dubbed the new speciesPilea cavernicolaafter the Latin for cave-dweller. In its subterranean lair,Pilea cavernicolaonly receives .04-2.78% the amount of full daylight. This feat of survival speaks to life’s tenacity and the endless versatility of evolution, but despite its hardiness,Pilea cavernicolais officially a vulnerable species according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). At present, scientists know the nettle from less than 200 mature specimens in only two locations—well within the IUCN’s criteria for vulnerability—but what is more disconcerting is the human threatPilea cavernicolafaces. Despite the Karst Region’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, China continues to expand mining operations in the region. Farmers growing medicinal plants may also disturb the cave nettle by carving terraces right under its home. But if the steep and unforgiving terrain of the Karst Region prove more vexing to developers, we may learn more aboutPilea cavernicola's secrets of survival. Botanists Wei Yi-Gang, Guangxi Institute of Botany, and Alex Monro, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, standing within Yangzi cave with clumps of plants from the nettle family nearby. Photo by: Alex Monro.CITATION: Monro AK, Wei YG, Chen CJ (2012) Three new species of Pilea (Urticaceae) from limestone karst in China. PhytoKeys 19: 51–66. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.19.3968

Stylidium on stilts

Western Australia
A plant keeping cool above the hot sand?

A Cabinet of Botanical Curiosities

You can find more of my reasoning in Talking Plants, but this blog (Talking Plants Too) is a scrapbook for a a real or virtual Cabinet of Botanical Curiosities.

It is devoted to Strange and Outlandish Plants; Bizarre, Bewildering, Bewitching & Baffling Botany; and Odd Tales about Odd Plants from an Odd Part of the World.

It will also feature Power Plants; Plants with a Purpose; and Elemental Botany: responding to Fire,
Water, Earth and Air.

It won't be as neat and tidy as Talking Plants and I'll return to posts to update and edit them so you can forget chronology!

I welcome your contributions.