ROADSIDE APHELANDRAS
FLOWERING

If you're traveling down a road or walking a trail here where the thin, dry soil is much disturbed and weedy, and you see a slender, knee- to waist-high "weed" topped with spikes of very red flowers, a good bet is that the plant belongs to the genus Aphelandra, for which I haven't found an English name. There are several species. One growing near my casita is shown below:

The habitat description I just wrote for Aphelandras is similar to what appeared in this month's September 1 Newsletter when I introduced you to the red-flowered Scarlet-Bush, Hamelia patens. Unrelated Scarlet-Bush is larger, more branched and occurs in moister, less disturbed sites than does Aphelandra. Still, beginners sometimes get them confused just because both are common, red-flowered, roadside plants. You can compare the above Aphelandra image with the Scarlet-Bush at http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/hamelia.htm.

Some might also confuse it with Scarlet Sage, shown at http://www.backyardnature.net/q/salvia-c.htm.

But, Scarlet Sage is a square-stemmed mint with only two pollen-producing stamens, while Aphelandra flowers bear four fertile stamens.

Aphelandras are members of the Acanthus Family, the Acanthaceae, a mostly tropical family. A good field mark of the Acanthus Family is that usually a bract, or scoop-shaped modified leaf, grows at the base of each flower in the spike. You can see such a bract on an Aphelandra that already has flowered, lost its corolla and now its fruit is maturing below:

In that picture, a bit left of center, a loopy, brown, stringlike thing -- the style -- emerges from the cylindrical calyx crowned with five sharp sepals. Below the calyx the large, hairy, sharp-toothed item slashing across the image and pointing toward the upper right is the bract. On the bract's near side you see two sharp, dark-tipped teeth. If you grow Garden Acanthus you may find these miniature bract teeth similar to those subtending blossoms of the larger, more robust garden favorite.

Another good field mark for the Acanthus Family is that long after pollination has occurred and the corollas have fallen off, those long, loopy styles remain atop the ovary. The persistent styles are conspicuous in both the above pictures.

Who knows why the Acanthus Family seems to need its bracts and persistent styles? The vast majority of other flowering-plant families either don't have them or let them shrivel up and drop off as soon as pollination is completed.