Canthium inerme leaves and more

The smoothly entire Canthium inerme leaf margins tapering to slightly attenuating tips are usually restricted to stem tips, i.e. leaves drop off early. The leaves are opposite, one of the second pair in picture already lost.

Petioles are long, between 0,5 cm and 1,5 cm. The leaf midrib is pale green and conspicuous; the three or four pairs of incurving lateral veins are also visible. Leaf surfaces are dark to pale green above, softly leathery and hairless.

There are domatia with or without hair-tufts upon the leaves. A domatium is a small chamber upon a plant, often formed upon the lower leaf surface at the juncture of the midrib and a lateral vein. This is a “housing scheme” offered by plants to arthropods, i.e. spiders, insects, mites and other tiny invertebrate animals, to live there in usually mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships with the plant.

The bigger living things on earth, including people, host myriads of tiny to invisibly small species that help matters along in a multitude of ways. Sometimes these internal or surface squatters acquire the wrong company that introduce detrimental effects or kill the host.

This terminal life event causes mass emigration or catastrophe among the secondary communities. Think of yourself as not only a private individual, but also as an office block or flats without rent control.

But don’t worry, all the dead leftovers become food to somebody or something hungry out there… or in there. This is the natural source of the intuitive notion that humanity has a bigger purpose in life (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Wikiwand).