This week is Thanksgiving, and with that comes many hours spent cooped up with people you share little to nothing with but genetics. These contrasts typically become most noticeable once some fun-loving soul decides to baste the conversation with unadulterated far-(right/left)wing politics. Isn’t family great! : )
Well, the same thing happens in the plant world, though thankfully, since plants can’t speak, or truthfully, travel, they don’t tend to get in fist-fights over the gravy with their unlikelier kin. The other day I discovered this plant, the tropical tree heliotrope — also called octopus bush for fairly obvious reasons — over at Botany Photo of the Day:
Is it just me or does that plant look like it could use a pair of googly eyes above its flower tentacles? http://www.flickr.com/photos/wlcutler/ / CC BY 2.0
Imagine my surprise when I discovered it’s in the same family — the Boraginaceae (bor-aj-i-nase’-ee-ay) — as the sweet little alpine forget-me-nots I know and love!
These things smell divine, too. You'd never guess such a little flower could put out such a big, beautiful smell. http://www.flickr.com/photos/99067413@N00/ / CC BY-NC 2.0 Non-commercial use only.
Such is the power of evolution. Every forget-me-not family member I’d previously encountered had been, well, I believe the PC term is “diminuitive” (being such myself). And then I find this monster. But genes don’t lie.
If you look very carefully at the tree heliotrope flowers, you will see the resemblance to forget-me-not flowers, and the scorpioid cymes (flower spikes (science-nerd term: inflorescences) with a coiled end like a scorpion’s tail) forming the octopus tentacles seem pretty characteristic of the family too (though the presence of 4 little nutlets as fruit is the most diagnostic characteristic of the family). Here’s what they look like in a rather more sedate member of the family, another species of forget-me-not:
Note the scorpion-tail cyme -- it's out of focus but it coils like a backward six that fell over with the ascender pointing left. A second coiled cyme faces us head-on on the left.http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawnzy/ / CC BY 2.0
Naturalists (and you and I) can often recognize new members of families like this instinctually using something the Germans call “bauplan“, or body plan in English. When you start learning bauplans, you start getting a creepy, deep-in-your-bones feeling you’ve *seen* some plant or organism before, you just know it, especially if you haven’t. It happens with all kinds of creatures, and usually starts to become noticeable after you’ve spent enough time connecting names with flowers/mushrooms/tentacles and communing with them in the gardens/woods/deep-sea submersible.
For example, many times when I’m out in the woods I’ll pick up an unfamiliar mushroom and declare — rather mystically for a person of a scientific bent — it’s got that “Cortinarius” feeling. It’s the underlying structural similarities — the angle of a curling cap, the texture of a petal (the texture of forget-me-not petals is quite distinctive: almost styrofoamy), or in this case, the shape of the flowers and flower-stalks — between something new and something old that are tipping your brain off and giving you faux deja-vu. It’s probably the same feeling you’d get if you encountered one of the many lesser-known Baldwin brothers for the first time.
Here is a tree that puts the Forget-Me-Not Family (Boraginaceae) in context — it’s in the asterid mega-clade (would not have guessed a kinship with asters!) and is most closely related to the mint (Lamiaceae), potato/tomato (Solanaceae) and gentian families (Gentianaceae). Back out via the little arrow to the left to put it in larger context.
So this week as you’re sitting across from your cousin Lloyd, just be grateful that the other 364 days of the year you do not have to listen to the talking points of either Glenn Beck or Michael Moore, and you can bloom happily in your own little garden.
p.s. — Haven’t forgotten about finishing up the story of the paleodicots! But they will have to wait until next weekend.
