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Batty Garden: One can count on the Count to have plants with bite
Newsday Photo
The giant saguaro cactus in Arizona is pollinated mostly by bats.
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Published: October 30, 2009
Good evening. On the eve of Halloween, let's take a leisurely stroll through Dracula's garden.
I imagine that the frills and fragrances that the typical gardener seeks simply don't exist. Instead, we might find plants with a bit of an edge.
On Halloween, all thoughts of bats pertain to the kind that go for the throat. But Dracula has many vegetarian cousins.
Many of the world's tropical and desert plants are pollinated by bats. Bats are mostly responsible for the pollination of the giant saguaro cactus and the organ-pipe cactus in the Arizona desert. The large white cup-shaped flowers open when darkness falls to offer nectar to the winged creatures of the night. Bat pollination is known as chiropterophily.
Surely we would find a bat flower in the Count's collection. This tropical plant in the genus Tacca has bat-shaped flowers that are almost black with long, stringy whisker-like appendages that dangle from the blossoms. Overall, it has a sinister appearance, as if those flowers might just slip off and crawl around the room. It is a native of tropical forests in Southeast Asia, and though it has a reputation for being finicky, it can be grown in a house or greenhouse. Care should be taken to give it good air circulation and plenty of humidity, the same conditions favorable to many orchids.
Dracula actually shares his name, which means little dragon, with a genus of plants. Plants in the genus Dracula are mostly centered in the cool, moist elevations of Ecuador and Columbia. In the home, they need lots of humidity, around 80 percent, good air circulation and temperatures that rarely exceed 80 degrees. Pure water is essential, too. These plants need to be watered with rain water or filtered water.
The flowers are among the more bizarre in the kingdom. Basically variations on a triangular shape with the points extended into long tails, their centers are adorned with a small lip. They may be marked with warts, hair, striations and colored variously in liver red and almost black, rust, copper and maroon. Some smell like fungi. Others are fuzzy, coated with so many hairs that they appear more like mammals than flowers.
We often celebrate the sweet-scented fragrance of our garden flowers, but there are flowers that the nose will not find so delightful. Some flowers imitate the scent of rotting flesh -- in an attempt to attract the action of flies and carrion beetles. These include several succulents such as stapelia and huernia, arid land plants whose fantastic flowers are star shaped and variously marked with stripes, spots and striations, sometimes even fur. Many are liver colored to imitate putrefying carrion.
I was once seduced by a plant of Stapelia gigantea called zebra flower for its wildly striped flowers. I bought it because I was attracted to the huge bud it had formed, easily the size of my hand. It opened the next day, sending an awful stench through the house. Out the door and into the yard it went, where it was soon covered by a swarm of flies. It is a nasty pollination strategy, but it works.
Several plants actually assault and sometimes murder their pollinators. The bucket orchid of Central America consists of two, wing-like petals and a bucket beneath. The plant secretes a liquid, which fills the bucket. It also secretes an oily substance that is irresistible to the male of a species of euglossine bee. The bee uses the oily substance to attract a mate. With dozens of bees vying for the substance, sooner or later one falls in the bucket. There is only one way out of the liquid-filled bucket, a tiny knob that serves as a foothold to the entry of a tunnel. The tunnel leads up through the flower, narrowing along the way until just before the exit where a pollen sac is stuck on his back. Should he fall into another trap, a hook on the following flower will remove the pollen and pollinate the plant.
Some plants take the bucket maneuver a step further and eat the insects they capture. Such passive traps are found in the pitcher plants of the Southeastern U.S. and in Nepenthes, a group of tropical Asian plants. They are able to hold water in modified leaves. Gradually through enzymes, they "eat" their prey.
No plant has developed this strategy of catching its own fertilizer better than the Venus fly trap. Found only in North Carolina and South Carolina, the fly trap literally snaps shut when three triggers are stimulated on a modified leaf. The leaf is shaped like an open clam shell with the triggers sitting in the fold. When an insect hits more than one trigger in succession, the trap closes in a flash. As the insect struggles, it hits the trigger again and the trap goes tighter. The trap then secretes digestive chemicals and it's bye-bye fly.
Question of the week
Dear David: Last spring I read your article on oak leaf hydrangeas. Yesterday, I purchased three for a very shady area of my backyard. Can it be too shady for these hydrangeas to be successful? The area that I want to plant these Amethysts is along a 6-foot tall, privacy fence, which completely blocks light from the west. Moreover, the dense canopy of trees will not allow much light. -- Brian Babyak
Dear Brian: The oak leaf hydrangea is a plant I recommend for its three-season interest. This time of year the foliage is beginning to turn color, anywhere from purple to deep wine. In late spring, foot-long panicles of white flowers develop that fade to a rosy pink before turning tan and persisting through winter unless removed. The large leaves are interesting all year round, and to top it all off the plant is a native. But it is not for deep shade. The plant does best in light shade protected from the afternoon sun. Flowering will probably be reduced in deep shade, but I expect you will get some performance from the plant.
If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.
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