BOAT LILY

Another sinkhole-bottom denizen of Black Vulture Cenote was the familiar-looking Boat Lily shown below:

It's familiar-looking because it's often grown as an ornamental in gardens here and in greenhouses and as potted plants beyond the tropics. It's TRADESCANTIA SPATHACEA, a member of the Spiderwort Family, the Commelinaceae. Around here you find it only in cenotes and the most shaded, sheltered parts of the scrub.

Note the curious manner in which the thumbnail-size, white blossoms emerge from the leaf bases. A close-up of a flower showing something else special about it is below:

Can you see how the blossom arises from what looks like a green, folded-together leaf? That's a modified leaf referred to as a bract and it protects the flowers. The delicate blossom develops inside the folded bract, the day it opens it barely pokes its head above the bract's rims, then after pollination its pedicel bends the maturing ovary backward out of the way, to make place for the next flower. In the picture you can see bent-back pedicels to the right, behind the flower. You may recall similar bracts subtending flowers in various dayflowers, genus Commelina, we've run into. Dayflowers belong to the same family. The way the flowers are cradled inside the folded bracts has given rise to some of the plant's many names -- Boat Lily, Moses-in-a-boat, Oysterplant, Boatplant.