Willdenowia glomerata male flower

    Willdenowia glomerata male flower
    Author: Ivan Lätti
    Photographer: Thabo Maphisa

    Willdenowia glomerata is dioecious in typical restio fashion, this flower on a male plant. The flowers are borne in muddled-looking panicled racemes, not spikelets, partly concealed by spathes.

    The female flower consists of one spikelet at a culm tip. Each spikelet has only one terminal flower with (six) small tepals and two pink styles that curve down; mostly covered by the bracts. The ovary is one-chambered.

    There are several cartilaginous bracts that will conceal the spherical nut. Although the plant is commonly known as the green-nut sunreed, the ripe nut is brown or black, hard and pitted or smooth with an elaiosome present (Dorrat-Haaksma and Linder, 2012; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist; Wikipedia).

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