Pelargonium sidoides flowers showing style branches

The five style branches of the very dark Pelargonium sidoides flowers radiate outwards from the style tips, delicately thin and purple. The stigmas at the branch tips await pollen to be brought by insects if all works out well.

But this is nature, a vast phenomenon where all sorts of unforeseen things happen! Especially insofar as all the living is food to something else. Many reproductive repeats are therefore attempted by every species and hopefully achieved, in order to yield species survival from sufficient successes.

The narrow, blackish petals in picture curve out. There are pale, pointed bracts where the individual flower pedicels join at the tip of the shared peduncle. Where the dark petals are absent, the narrow green sepals cohere forward or porrect, their pale green blades surrounded by white-haired margins (iNaturalist; www.plantzafrica.com).