Discover ‘Woolly Devil’, the oddest sunflower you’ve ever seen
A small flower woolly flower shown by the Big Bend National Park of Texas
Woolly close view of the devil’s sunflower.
There is a new sunflower in the village. But it’s not your stereotypical sunflower with a cheerful yellow petal.
The so-called “Woolly Devil” is a small, pale and well camouflaged limestone rock rich rock and looks like the same Plants in the Big Bend Park in Texas. “When we found it, we don’t realize that it was something new,” says Deb Manley, a volunteer in the park, was the first to be the first with a colleague. “I thought it would be difficult to see that it was another little year.”
And, in fact, it was quite difficult to look; It was at all at all for the little ones at all, Fuzzy Wildflower Plant. But that was a very good reason, the species that scientists do not know the flowers. “He should be so special that he had to be his own genre, and that is a very rare thing,” Isaac Lichter Marck, evolutionary biologist and Daisy taxonomist, at the California Academy of Sciences. Like Manley, it is a member of the group Woolly published the discovery of the devil In February Phytokeys.
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Solar flowers include more than 30,000 species among flowering plants. Which, of course, iconic, bright yellow “ordinary sunflower” or Helianthus Annuus. All sunflower species have a common feature: the chapter is made up of two varieties of flower ray flowers, which form a feature of solar petals halo and fill the flowers that meet the interior ring of the flower head. Woolly devil follows this plan: two or three ray flowers are white with sports, which contains some flowers of the different disk between the two.
Big Bend National Park Carolyn Whiting Botanist photos Woolly Devil Sunflower.
Wild solar flowers grow in harsh environments, for example Desert conditions Those characterized by the Big Bend National Park: Many sun, extreme heat and occasional summer storms. “It has been a great success in the last 15 million years. He has suffered a lot to cool and dry land,” says Lichter Marck.
The new discovery is formally known Biraded ovicula. Ovicula “Little Sheep” means Latin, and the name does not describe the plant, as well as iconic Bighorn sheep Hunters and diseases were killed before they had a great bend. (Texas began to re-enter the sheep in 2010). Meanwhile, the name “Woolly Devil” reflects the discovery of the canyon called Devil’s, Manley says, as well as the ridiculous look of plants with two rays, and the frustration of other small and fuzzy plants.
And these plants are really woolen, Lichter Marck says. Thousands of hair completely cover the stems and leaves. “To get out of the plants of DNA, we had to really shave a little leaf,” he said. It is likely that the peas protect the plant from hungry animals, noticed. “Imagine that you are a herbaceous, you come to chew these leaves, but you just get a wool,” says Lichter Marck.
This feature is amazing in so many strong environments between the sunflower. The plant also protects the plants damaged by moisture that cleans the moisture or damaged dry desert. And right now is the region In severe droughtSo they need all the protection of wool devils, Manley says.
Drought causes the wool devil to keep the tiles in Manley and see anyone else. The plant is difficult to distinguish when there is no garden, and after the rain it has only flowers. “It’s frustrating,” said Manley, too, can also go down the plant right now, much newer in the park that has heard of the discovery. “Right now there isn’t much in the park, the main botanical event right now is a lot of plants that die,” he explains.
Even if the drought burns, Lichter Marck worries Woolly around the fate of the devil, and last year, only a few patches in the park were identified. “We may have this plant dominated to his departure, and we are lucky to do so,” he noted. “It’s almost urgent science type. We need to document them before they disappear.”
