Menorcan Vincetoxicum with pink flowers

A new species? A hybrid?

The conservative of the Soller Botanical Garden told me its history. A fan to the botany of Menorca does found about ten years ago in a precipice of the island a Vincetoxicum very different from the two habitual species, the one of black flowers and the one of white flowers. This one had the flowers of an alive pink color with the target-yellowish center. Suspecting that he had found a small treasure, he gathered seeds and he sent them to the botanical garden, where they came to seed them in the section of native plants of the Balearic Islands. 

Flower of Menorcan Vincetoxicum photographed at the end of April. It seems a small starfish that shines with own light. Truth that is pretty?. As it can see the ants are very sweet-toothed of its nectar and they act like true pollinator. 

The seeds germinated and after several years of growth they gave its first flowers. Genetically speaking the plant does not seem hybrid then in theory its flowers would have to be completely pink, halfway between the almost black dark garnet of the Vincetoxicum nigrum and the slightly yellowish target of the Vincetoxicum hirundinaria.

Intrigued by knowing more on this Asclepiadaceae I tried to find information exceeds it and I did not find anything. I looked for species of pink flowers in Europe and the Mediterranean basin and I did not have luck either. Between the photographies on Vincetoxicum that shows the Google finder is no similar one. 

 Combined image with the three flowers of Vincetoxicum.

I contacted with a professor of botany of the University of the Balearic Islands, I spoke to him of this plant and I sent him a few photos, but he did not say me nothing because he did not know its existence. I asked him what names could put to it to insert the photos in my website and he suggested me provisionally called Vincetoxicum. hirundinaria var.balearicum. If finally it turns out to be a new species its name could be Vincetoxicum minoricensis, like the famous Lysimachia minoricensis already extinct in the nature. When it advances and the study of the genome becomes easier and cheap, perhaps then there are surprises. The genes do not lie.

In the vast scientific work even without finishing on the Iberian Flora two species in Spanish territory, both presents in the Island of Menorca are only mentioned: Vincetoxicum nigrum and Vincetoxicum hirundinaria.

New buds of Menorcan Vincetoxicum in April. 

Three years ago an eminent French scientist, René Sforza, contacted with me by email. He is very interested in seeing plants of Vincetoxicum nigrum of Majorca, because he was making a study of the plagues that affect this plant in order to find a natural enemy that it serves for the biological control against the Vincetoxicum nigrum introduced and feral in Canada and north of USA, where this Mediterranean plant has proliferated as much that it has become an uncontrollable plague. Don't mention it they have served chemical products, because it turns out to be resistant to them. 

 Flowers of Menorcan Vincetoxicum in May.

Days later Professor René Sforza came to Majorca and I showed him several dozens of plants of Vincetoxicum nigrum that grow in mountains of Serra de Tramuntana. From each of them he kept a few leaves in separated envelopes to calmly study them once from return to France. He is coverall interested to find some pathogenic fungus or virus for the Vincetoxicum.

I spoke him of the Vincetoxicum of pink flowers and we went to see it in the botanical Garden. It said to me that it knew tens Mediterranean and American species of Vincetoxicum, but those pink flowers were not known for him. He suggested that perhaps it was a hybrid, but that stops to assure its identity made lack a genetic study. 

 Fruit of Menorcan Vincetoxicum still immature.

Every spring undergoes the ruthless parasitization of thousands of aphids of the Aphis nerii species.

 Luckily the aphids respects the flowers and the Vincetoxicum can reproduce.

Although logically the aphids debilitates the plant sucking the sap, this one is so vigorous that supports perfectly the parasitization without apparent damages.

Therefore this peculiar asclepiadaceae continues being a stranger for science, nobody is interested in it and still remains without studying. One does not know if it is a species, a subspecies, a variety or a hybrid. Luckily its survival is assured thanks to the Soller Botanical Garden that takes care of it and keeps its seeds in the Germplasm Bank, one richest in species of the Mediterranean.

Mandragora autumnalis: beautiful and dangerous

Mandragora autumnalis is a small plant of autumnal flowering belonging to Solanaceae family. It is very rich in atropinic alkaloids like the atropine and the scopolamine that make it very toxic and dangerous. These alkaloids used separately in low doses are well known by the modern medicine, but in the antiquity it was not possible to separate them and their poisonous effects were added, getting to cause the death to that consumed its leaves, fruits or roots. In the days of Pliny the Elder, about 2,000 years ago, in the military campaign of Rome against the Germans, the surgeons gave to chew a piece of mandrake root to the wounded to stun them before operating to them or amputating a member to them, since it has a strong anesthetic effect. In the Middle Age it was one of the more  used plants in witchcraft by its hallucinogenic effects. It was one of the basic components of the ointment with which the sorceresses greased their genitals in aquelarres, securing therefore a strong aphrodisiac and delirious effect, into believing that they flying and copulated with Satan.

 

Gorgeous flowers of mandrake at the beginning of autumn. Its alive color blue-violet shines with own light. I recommend to extend the image with a double click to appreciate better the details. 

 Leaves of Mandragora autumnalis in March. The plant loses the leaves in summer, remaining in aestivation until the first rains of the autumn. Their lanceolate leaves form a basal rosette. They are rough with the edge slightly waved. The stem is short and appears by one long and heavy root that gets to penetrate until a meter in the ground. Indeed the tendency by the root to be divided in two bifurcations in the form of two legs gives to the uprooted plant an anthropomorphic aspect  that in the antiquity increased its magical character.

Same previous mandrake in full bloom in October. The flowers are hermaphrodite and its corolla usually is off-white with bluish, pink or violet color more or less intense. 

The beauty and the purity of the flowers are extraordinary. Their reproductive organs are formed by five stamens, two of them more lengths than the other three, with anthers of a beautiful pink color and off-white pollen and a length pistile with the ovary in their base and in their end the bilobed or trilobed stigma of a smooth yellowish color. I recommend to extend the image with a double click.

 
Pink flower of mandrake in the middle of October. The abundant trichomes that cover the underside of petals are seen very well .
 

Detail of the five stamens and the pistil of the previous flower.

Lateral vision of a flower of Mandragora autumnalis. The chalice is turbinated with five sepals welded in a tube in its basal part and prolonged in five lobes longer than the tube. Corolla is campanulate with five lobes in the form of petals welded in its base. 

Fruits in different stages of maturation. At the outset they have an intense dark green color and as they are maturing they are acquiring a beautiful orange color.

 Immature fruit in November. The five lobes of the chalice are bordered by long trichomes.

Mature fruits of Mandragora autumnalis in November. One of them is partially eaten by the slimy and snails that are immune to the atropinic alkaloids. 

Detail of Mandragora autumnalis seeds.

The seeds of mandrake to germinate must surpass two obstacles:

The first obstacle receives the name of external lethargy and is caused by the impermeability of cuticle that covers the seeds that prevent the entrance of the humidity and the hydration of the embryo. It is surpassed with the stratification of seeds in the soil during many months, sometimes up to three years, by the action of the fungi and bacteria of the ground that scarify the cuticle and break their impermeability. Of artificial way the external lethargy of fast form can be surpassed putting under the seeds the action of an acid like the sulfuric or a base like the lye during several minutes. Its corrosive action scarify the cuticle and facilitates the later hydration of the embryo. Of slower and more natural form the same is obtained simply stratifying the seeds in vegetal substrate during several months.

The second obstacle is the internal lethargy of the embryo of the seed that remains "asleep" and it only wakes up after supporting several months of intense cold during the winter. Of artificial way the internal lethargy can be surpassed keeping the seeds in humid vegetal substrate within a container closed inside the refrigerator during several months. 

Surpassed both lethargies, as much in the nature as of artificial way, the seeds germinate in the following autumn or in spring, although sometimes they can take up to three years.