Cycnium racemosum

Cycnium racemosum is a hemiparasitic herb. Hemiparasites depend on other plants for part of their nutritional needs, such as water and minerals, while they can function on their own for acquiring carbon. These plants are sometimes called semiparasites. Holoparasites again, receive both the inorganic and organic components from host plants.

The likely neighbours of C. racemosum plants are grasses. So the roots simply grow an attachment to a nearby grassy plant for tapping its resources. Common names for the plant include large pink mushroom flower and large pink ink plant.

The ink plants, comprising several Cycnium species and also the related Harveya plants, the inkflowers, turn black when they dry out, yielding a substance used in olden times to make writing ink.

C. racemosum has narrow, toothed, hairy leaves. The oval fruit is enclosed by the calyx. Racemosum means clustered or bunch-like, as in grapes.

The species distribution is in the eastern parts of South Africa, found in the Eastern Cape, the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal, as well as in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and further in southern Africa.

The habitat is summer rainfall grassland. The species is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Manning, 2009; Wikipedia; http://redlist.sanbi.org).