They are on their anemone

Grape-leaf anemone (Eriocapitella vitifolia) were growing at the edge of the path. We were coming down Phulchowki in the south of Kathmandu. I did a double take. It is a flower of the late summer. You expect to see it in August and, maybe, in September. How was it growing here in early November? Could it be something else? Not a chance. The form of the flower, the shape of the leaves, everything pointed to this one species of anemone. The seasons are topsy turvy of course, but this late a flowering!

This post appears as scheduled while I am travelling. I’ll be connected, but may be slow to look at your comments and posts. I hope you will bear with my delays.

Dalhousie Blue Bells

Why did this flower look half familiar? I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I took photos and left the identification for later. Now when I dug it out after a whole season has passed, I realized why I had that nagging feeling. This coneflower (Strobilanthes penstemonides) is related to the Karvi and Neelakurinji which mass-flower once in many years. I’ve seen other coneflowers too, but mainly in the western ghats, but this was growing in the Himalayas.

Could the ID be wrong? I can’t rule that out without uprooting the plant. Still, everything I see fits: the shape of the flower, the anthers and stamen, the form of the leaves (highlighted in the photo above), the size of the bush and flower, and even the way it buds out. Then I remembered that a year earlier I’d seen chir pheasants eating a coneflower (Strobilanthes) at a similar height in Uttarakhand. And then there is the common name: Dalhousie blue bells. It’s a Himalayan species all right. So the ID is very likely to be correct.

This post appears as scheduled while I am travelling. I’ll be connected, but may be slow to look at your comments and posts. I hope you will bear with my delays.

A micro-flower of Nepal

A plant that I saw growing by the road down Phulchowki looked like it was about to bud. Each bud was less than half a centimeter across. “Definitely one of the Aster family,” I thought to myself as I took the macro. Not at all, as I found when I looked at the photo. The balls were made of many, really many, tiny flowers, as you can see. Each flower is less than 100 microns long. The plant is not in the family Asteraceae. The inner flowers have begun to open up, the outer buds in each ball-like inflorescence are yet to open. My camera sees things more clearly than my eye.

I had photos of the whole plant, and you can see the shape of the deeply lobed leaves here. The leaves are a couple of centimeters long, so this photo gives you a better sense of the scale of the flowers. The branching stem reminded me of knotweed. I looked through whatever flower-finders I could find. Nothing identifies these microscopic flowers. Most guides concentrate on flowers that the human eye can see. But they are insufficient today, when a pocket-sized camera can resolve what needed a low-powered microscope earlier.

I usually set the camera on focus stacking mode when I take macros of these tiny things. As a result I caught a caterpillar perched on the branch. The little crawler was about a centimeter long, so that gives you a scale of things. I have a hard time identifying moths. Identifying the caterpillar is just impossible for me.

Autumn with bells on it

We’d decided to spend a morning climbing Phulchowki in Kathmandu while doing some birding. That was a bit of a washout. We spotted a few birds, but just a few. But the wildflower haul was terrific. When I came across these lovely bells hanging on an otherwise dry bush I was pretty sure that I would be able to identify it later. If it had been red or orange I would have immediately put it down as a species of Aeschynanthus. The dry bush was over a meter high, with an upright central stem from which branches went out at regular intervals. I couldn’t find this in a field guide, but eventually an app pointed me in the right direction: genus Isodon. It is likely to be Isodon lophanthoides, whose Nepali name is Masino chapte.

Basket Karvi

Strobilanthes is a strange genus. Like the bamboos, it contains multiple species which mass flower once in a while. Bamboos famously die after flowering. Strobilanthes do not. The basket Karvi (Strobilanthes sessilis), for example, mass flowers every seven years, and the small basket shaped bush lives on to flower again. If someone has written about how long a typical bush survives then I would like to know.

Different populations of basket Karvi flower in different years. In Kaas the mass flowering was supposed to be in 2023. When I went at the end of September, the weeks of hard rain had washed away the flowers. It was as disappointing as my visit to Erivakulam national park in 2018 to see the once-in-12-years mass flowering of Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes Kunthiana). That’s a story I’ve written about elsewhere. We don’t know the reasons for mass flowering, but climate change is messing with it.

I’m travelling in a really odd place where no network reaches. I will take a look at your posts and telegrams as soon as I’m able to.

Sahyadri Dew-grass

Greater Cat’s Ears, Abhali, Sahyadri Dew-grass, Cyanotis tuberosa, Valukaikizhangu, there are many different names for this plant. It grows in the linguistically diverse western ghats of India. I’ve written about it many times before, about its six stamens, about the flowering shoots, the tuber, and so on. I won’t write repeat myself again. This last monsoon I was happy just to look at an old favourite.

Blue Sonki

Blue Sonki (Adenoon indicum) is a pretty unique plant. The only member of its genus, it was described first in 1850 CE by the great botanist Nicolas Dalzell. I saw this half meter, knee high, bush in flower on the Kaas plateau at the end of September. It is a spectacular and uncommon native of the western ghats, and not found elsewhere. As you can see from the complex flowers, it is a member of the aster family (Asteraceae). An insight by Dalzell is relevant to the once forested rain-shadowed landscape leeward of the ghats; he was the first person to realize that deforestation is associated with decreased rainfall in the surroundings.

Nilgiri Flemingia

Nilgiri Flemingia (Flemingia nilghiriensis) was a flower I’d not noticed on previous visits to the Kaas plateau. The specimens I saw now grew in the soil between cracks in the stony plateau, its stem running along the ground and sending up erect stalks bearing hairy leaves and a single inflorescence. In the constant drizzle of that rainy day the hairy flower caught little drops of water which gleamed in the diffuse light. Later I found that the Flemingia are a genus in the pea family (Fabaceae) spread across Africa, India, southeast Asia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. This perennial species from peninsular India is among a few in the genus which have an edible fleshy tuber.

The rain had beaten down the flowers of the inflorescence, so I had to crouch to get a better look at them. There were golden spots on the purple petals. These spots and the yellow hairs around the flowers would probably be how I would identify it in coming years. There is some discussion about whether the leaves should be uneven in thickness, so, when viewed against light it would show small translucent dots. Another bit of observation left for the next time. Everyone seems to warn you to be careful around these plants; it is a threatened species.

Botanical Survey of India classification: Endangered

Bulbous candlestick

Kaas plateau has several species of the odd genus Ceropegia. The flowers that you see here belong to Ceropegia bulbosa. Once you know its name you don’t need me to draw your attention to the bulbous base and tip of the candlestick. Like all members of its family, the petals open up to attract flies. Once it is in, the petals hinge closed to trap it. The frantic fly buzzes about, reaching deep into the bulbous kettle where it pollinates the flower and gets its reward of nectar. Once it is pollinated, the erect flower droops, and the cage of petals opens up to let the fly free. These are buds, the petals not yet fully formed.

The vines were long and twinned, and the thick round leaves were attached close to the stem. The bulbous ceropegia is said to be widely distributed in the Western ghats, but this was my first sighting of it. It is supposed to be threatened, so it must be rare although found over a large region.

Hairy candlestick

Ceropegia is a genus of plants in the milkweed subfamily (Asclepiadoideae) of the dogbane family (Apocynaceae) with a strange reproductive habit. The flowers release pheromones normally secreted by distressed predatory arthropods. This attracts flies which live by stealing its prey. The long petals of the flower snap shut over the fly. As it buzzes about, it penetrates deep into the long tube which contains the sexual organs of the flower. When pollination occurs, the petals open up, letting the fly go. I find it interesting that the genuses of plants which have unusual relationships with animals all seem to have originated from ancient Gondwanaland, and now are spread across India, Africa, Australia and South America.

The hairy Ceropegia (Ceropegia hirsuta var. vincifolia) may be the most common of the Ceropegia species on the Kaas Plateau. The two erect flowers that you see above are young buds, still not mature. The petals will open up eventually to attract flies. The featured photo shows a drooping flower from the same vine which has been fertilized. The flower droops as the cage pf petals opens to force the fly out. The two wilted leaves that you see look like those of a periwinkle (Vinca), giving the reason for the long name of this particular candlestick flower.