Succulent plants have such bizarre looks - have you ever seen them?
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Images: Internet
"What, Australia has succulents too?" Quite a few people think this way. In fact, not only does Australia have succulents, it is also a severely underrated "succulent superpower." The succulent species here are rich and varied, with bizarre forms and fresh colors... In every respect, they are no less impressive than the well-known hotspots such as South Africa and Mexico. Now, let's talk about Australia's succulents.
Unless you are a professional, you probably could not guess correctly even with 10 chances. Follow along with the editor and get to know them by sight.
NO.1
"Such a good-looking plant is actually related to the common purslane? You must be kidding me." I wouldn't dare. Just like the tall tree Averrhoa carambola and the low, lush Oxalis corymbosa in lawns are both members of the wood sorrel family.
This succulent has no official Chinese name yet. The genus name Calandrinia was chosen to commemorate the Swiss scholar Jean-Louis Calandrini. Domestic scholars translate it as "Hongnianghua genus," derived from the English name for this type of plant, "red maid." Combined with their wax-drop-like leaves, for ease of introduction they are called "wax-drop red maid flowers."
The most eye-catching feature of the wax-drop red maid flower is undoubtedly its round, fleshy leaves. To a food lover, this water-drop shape, bright red color, and tempting sheen look exactly like sugar beans accidentally scattered on the ground by the creator - plump and fleshy, making people want to take a bite. No wonder the English name of the wax-drop red maid flower is "Jelly Beans."
The wax-drop red maid flower is an annual herbaceous plant. Their main stem is extremely short. The first layer of leaves grows flat against the ground in a ring, and then several small branches extend from the center of the ring, spreading in all directions. The small branches then divide into even smaller branches, continuously expanding, with coverage reaching as much as one meter wide. The entire plant is like an alien fortress, constantly sending out armies to attack cities, seize territory, and expand its domain - truly astonishing.
But most of the time, their leaves are an ordinary grass green. The stamp selected their bright red dripping appearance, which only appears when there is a large temperature difference between day and night and sufficient sunlight. At this time, because chlorophyll is destroyed and decomposed, anthocyanins and carotenoids and other flower pigments gain the upper hand, so the leaf color slowly transitions from grass green to cream yellow, orange-red, until it is completely dyed a brilliant red.
If there is insufficient light for a long time, the originally round and plump leaves will let themselves go, as if roughly pulled, growing into a clawed octopus monster that even their own mother could not recognize. Their flowers are small and exquisite, with petals as thin as cicada wings and colors as pink as cherry blossoms. When in full bloom, scattered pink dots adorn the desert, very beautiful.
The wax-drop red maid flower is distributed in the central desert region of Western Australia, where it is dry and rainless all year round. To adapt to the extreme environment, their leaves are highly succulent and store a large amount of water. In addition, most plants in the Calandrinia genus have underground roots as thick as radishes, which not only supply water but also anchor firmly in the sandy soil, avoiding being uprooted by strong winds.
These tenacious plants desperately absorb water in the dry land, striving to reproduce and survive, and also nourish other life: emu chicks peck at their leaves and rhizomes, obtaining precious water from them to get through the most vulnerable first 6 weeks of life. Not only animals, but even the local Aboriginal people of Western Australia also use them as a food source, harvesting and cultivating them.
NO.2
Here is another strange purslane. The plant creeps and spreads, with round or heart-shaped leaves that are leathery, thick, and succulent. Their leaf veins are very obvious, forming irregular cracked and sunken textures, with the leaf surface slightly arched, like little turtles hiding among the gravel. For ease of introduction, I temporarily call it turtle-shell purslane.
The leaf surface of turtle-shell purslane is usually grass green to dark green, and when in prime condition it approaches dark brown, rather similar to the sand color of its place of origin, blending well with the surrounding environment to create a camouflage effect and avoid being eaten by other animals. If not for the large, bright yellow flowers they can produce, spotting them at a glance in the vast desert is sometimes no easy task.
The underside of their leaves is fleshy and raised, densely covered with delicate net-like textures, and the leaf tissue appears translucent pomegranate red, refracting a glossy sheen in the sunlight. The flowers of turtle-shell purslane can reach 35mm in diameter, which counts as "huge" compared with leaves the size of a little finger. The petals and stamens and pistils are all bright yellow, bringing a touch of vitality to the dark red sandy soil.
Many succulents can be called "masters of disguise" in nature. Because of their posture, shape, color, and so on, they blend almost completely with the surrounding environment (gravel and stones), making it hard to tell true from false. We call this type of plant "stone mimicry plant." Such plants are mostly seen in Africa and Mexico, such as the familiar living stones, Haworthia, and Ariocarpus retusus. In Australia, however, they are quite rare, and most of the time this "stone mimicry" ability is seen only in the purslane family.
NO.3
If even this plant cannot overturn your common sense, then they would have grown so bizarrely for nothing. This succulent, which looks like it would squirt juice if bitten, can grow into a small shrub about 60 cm tall. Their leaves are reduced, and the segment-by-segment "sausages" in the stamp that look smooth, tender, and cream mint green are their highly succulent stems, which can not only replace leaves in photosynthesis but also store a large amount of water at the same time, adapting to the extremely dry environment of their place of origin.
The lotus-pink "pinecones" at the tops of the "sausages" are actually their spike inflorescences, formed by several hard bracts arranged alternately and opposite each other, tightly clasped together. As time goes on, they continue to grow to both sides. The white whiskers scattered on the bracts are their extremely tiny flowers, only about 1mm. This succulent produces millet-like seeds, which are still collected by local Aboriginal people and ground into flour to make bread.
The "peach" like part on top of the "pinecone" is their growth point. During the flowering period, the "peach" grows a short stem node upward, then divides new inflorescences to both sides. The inflorescences are nearly perpendicular to the stem and are arranged in crosswise opposite pairs with the adjacent inflorescence below. New growth points appear in the middle of the inflorescences, and in this way they continuously grow stem nodes upward and branch inflorescences sideways. When not in the flowering period, the "peach" part continues to grow new stem nodes upward and sometimes branches side shoots, gradually growing into a clump of small shrubs.
As they gradually mature, the succulent stems near the ground slowly shrink, eventually leaving only dry-wood-like xylem. At this time the whole plant also turns a very attractive pink-purple.
Sausage Australian glasswort is distributed in the saline-alkali zones of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, where it is dry and rainless all year round and almost no plants can survive. Only after the brief annual floods does this plant quickly sprout and grow.
More than 30 species in the Tecticornia genus have currently been discovered, the vast majority unique to Australia, with only Tecticornia indica widely distributed in the tropical coastal regions around the Indian Ocean. You may also have often seen a weird one with the scientific name Halosarcia bulbosa, which looks like skewers of steamed buns at a barbecue stall. This is actually also a succulent in the Tecticornia genus. In 2007, the genus Halosarcia and three other genera (Pachycornia, Sclerostegia, Tegicornia) were all merged into the genus Tecticornia.
NO.4
Compared with the "bizarre trio" that appeared earlier, this last one seems much more ordinary. It is a perennial low shrub, much branched, and can often grow into a very large clump. The biggest feature of this Aizoaceae succulent is its rod-shaped succulent leaves and star-like white flowers.
Their succulent leaves are arranged oppositely, and ice-crystal-like bladder cells can be seen with the naked eye, containing cell sap with salt. Why is this so? This is because they grow in inland salt lakes and saline-alkali zones of central and western Australia. To adapt to the harsh environment, they close their stomata during the hot daytime, maximally inhibiting transpiration, reducing water loss from the body, and at the same time expelling absorbed salt into the bladder cells.
Unlike other Aizoaceae succulents that can produce brilliant flowers, Stewart's pig face can only produce plain white flowers, and the flowers have no distinction between petals and sepals, only a perianth composed of four lanceolate lobes, with anthers peach-red or white. This succulent is also one of the natural foods of Australian Aboriginal people, and can be eaten raw or cooked, simply Australia's "ice plant."
In Australia, nearly 400 species of plants can be called "succulents." Of course, this is not a botanical concept. Whether something is succulent or not is a consensus reached in the horticultural world. For centuries, because they were not mainstream categories circulating in the horticultural world, and because they grow in unorthodox ways and are scattered in remote areas, Australia's succulents have long been neglected by the horticultural world. Even professional botanists or naturalists have paid little attention to such plants.
The four succulents fortunate enough to appear on stamps this time are only four little soldiers in Australia's great succulent army. More bizarre and fun species still await further discovery and research.
After reading this, don't you super! duper! want to grow succulents? Hold on, these rare succulent varieties are not easy to grow, so first grow the common succulents well. It is now the hardest summer for succulents - are your succulents doing okay?
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