Gomphocarpus cancellatus buds near opening

The couple of soft, red-purple buds of Gomphocarpus cancellatus facing the camera each has five triangle-tipped petals folded over the flat-topped structures. A few dark sepal tips are visible outside the corolla perimeters, clutching them. One sepal on the closed bud on the left is lifted, as if waving to the camera.

Anthesis or the revealing of floral content is imminent here, as one straightened petal of the bud on the right indicates. The white-rimmed petal margins don’t close here neatly, as if earlier opening for the benefit of pollinators may already have occurred.

Hairy pedicels of various colours and thickness snake about in the photo. The prominent dark one on the left provides an opportunity of observing its acutely pointed sepal tips. It has writhed, facing in the opposite direction to the rest, but as snakes do, a head can be turned rather quickly.

There are different densities of hairiness on stems, leaves and sepals, although all the indumentums are soft, whitish and of variable length. Hairless on the sepal margins and the inside of the flower by appearance, but who knows what a microscope might reveal (Manning, 2007; Bean and Johns, 2005; iNaturalist).