It's finally Friday, after a long long week, and it is almost the end of February. Looking forward to welcome March. Let's me share with you again some funny plant facts, so here's part two:
1. Small pockets of air inside cranberriescause them to bounce and float in water.
2. The flower of the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) is the largest unbranched flower in the world and can reach up to 15 feet tall. The bloom produces a smell like that of rotting meat, giving it the common name of corpse flower. A similar smell comes from Rafflesia, another plant that hails from the rain forests of Sumatra. Both plants developed their scent so they could be pollinated by flies; they don't compete with other blooms for butterflies and hummingbirds.
3. All parts of the oleander (Nerium oleander), a beautiful Mediterranean-native flowering shrub, are poisonous. Ingesting oleander leaves can cause gastrointestinal, cardiac, and central nervous system problems and possible death.
4. Iris means "rainbow" in Greek, and Iris was goddess of the rainbow in Greek mythology. Wormwood (Artemisia) was named after the goddess Artemis, milkweed (Asclepias) after the god Asclepius, and Hebe after the Greek goddess Hebe.
5. In France, May 1 is La Fete du Muguet, the festival of the lily-of-the-valley. The celebration includes giving bouquets of lily-of-the-valley to loved ones, wishing them health and happiness.
6. Angiosperm is the scientific name for flowering plants and refers to the seeds being borne in capsules or fruits. Nonflowering plants— pines, spruces, firs, junipers, larches, cycads, and ginkgoes— are called gymnosperms.
7. Snapdragon flowers resemble a dragon, and if you squeeze the sides, the dragon's mouth will appear to open and close.
8. A sunflower looks like one large flower, but each head is composed of hundreds of tiny flowers called florets, which ripen to become the seeds. This is the case for all plants in the sunflower family, including daisies, yarrow, goldenrod, asters, coreopsis, and bachelor's buttons.
9. Peaches, Pears, apricots, quinces, strawberries, and apples are members of the rose family. So are ornamental species such as spirea, mountain ash, goatsbeard, and ninebark.
10. Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is one of the oldest living tree species; it dates back to about 250 million years ago. Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is another ancient species; it dates back about 150 million years. Both were known in the fossil record before they were found alive.
Source: BHG