Romulea assumptionis, tiny and coquette

La pequeña Romulea assumptionis es un endemismo tirrénico de la família de las Iridaceae. Vive en las Islas Baleares y en las Îles d’Hyères cerca de Marsella. Crece en los claros de las garrigas mediterráneas iluminados por el sol del mediodía. Comparte su hábitat con jaras, lentiscos, brezos, bruscos, esparragueras, gamones, aladiernos, merenderas, gageas, albaidas, fenazos, romeros, aulagas, olivillos, orquídeas, acebuches, encinas y pinos carrascoThe small Romulea assumptionis is a Tyrrhenian endemism of the Iridaceae family. It lives in the Balearic Islands and the Îles d´Hyères near Marseille. It grows in the clear ones of Mediterranean garrigues illuminated by the sun of the noon. It shares its habitat with Cistus, Pistacia, Erica, Ruscus, Asparagus, Asphodelus, Rhamnus, Merendera, Gagea, Genista, Brachypodium, Phyllirea, Rosmarinus, Calicotome, some orchids (Ophrys, Orchis, Serapias, Barlia) and some trees like Olea europaea subsp. sylvestris, Quercus ilex subsp. ilex amd Pinus halepensis.

 Romulea assumptionis photographed in March the last day of the winter in a garrigue of the center from Majorca to about 210 msnm. The substrate where its bulb is taken root is made up of argillaceous and calcareous soil cover by a layer of mosses and lichens that absorb the humidity of the dew and transfers it to the ground facilitating the survival of the small Romulea. The bulb is tiny. It measures between 7 and 10 millimeters.

The botanist Juan Rita Larrucea, professor of the University of the Balearic Islands, after studying this species in depth could verify that the Romulea assumptionis indifferently grows on coastal grounds very droughts like those of Marina de LLucmajor, on more humid calcareous-argillaceous grounds of the interior of Majorca like the one of the photo, on sandy ground in the peninsula of Arta and on water substrates even saturated in the high Majorcan mountain. The variations in the substrate do not alter their phenotype that in all the habitats is always equal. 

Until it does few years was considered a strictly Balearic endemism, but in April of 2004 a group of French botanists, studying the flora of Îles d’Hyères, found a Romulea with an atypical phenology very similar to the Romulea columnae that at first made think them about a possible hibridization. Nevertheless later they discarded this possibility when stating that, while the present units of Romulea columnae in the islands already were releasing the first seeds, this Romulea was initiating the flowering with a clear chronological separation of two months between both flowerings, which made its hibridization impossible. For more information on the finding I recommend to consult this article: http://www.portcrosparcnational.fr/upload/rscientifique/Article21_5.pdf 

Lateral vision of previous Romulea assumptionis. Its unique flower open in the end of a stem that does not surpass the 11 centimeters. Usually it blooms since the end of March until May.

As I already said in a previous article (They adore to the God Sun), the Romulea assumptionis is an extreme example of heliophilia. The pollination of its unique flower depends as much on the diurnal insects that it only abre the tepals if its sensors of light detect sufficient ultraviolet rays incident on it. It knows that its pollenizers will only see its flower if this one is directly illuminated by the sun. The violet veins of their tepals orient to the pollenizers towards the reproductive organs of the flower where they find one small drop of nectar like prize to its invaluable contribution. Throughout the year the tiny Romulea is accumulating nutrients and energy in its small underground bulb with the unique purpose of producing a single flower and of assuring therefore the survival the species. It cannot squander energy uselessly nor it can put in danger to its descendants. Its small flower always is oriented towards the noon. If near it grow pines, olive trees or oaks that do shade to it during the morning, its flower patiently hopes solar rays of the noon to open its tepals. The cloudy days its flower remains closed until it improves the time. If it is able to be fertilized the first day, in the evening it is closed and no longer it returns open. On the contrary one it opens several followed days until securing its objective. 

 

The Romulea assumptionis flower is hermaphroditic, actinomorphic and erect. It measures between 8 and 12 millimeters. The tepals are white with violet veins and are united by their base having formed a tube. Stamens have yellow anthers and the unique pistil is white and finishes in three deeply bifid stigmatic branches with filiform divisions that do not exceed anthers.


The fruit is a capsule of 5 to 11 millimeters.

The Romulea sort is integrated by 90 species that are distributed mainly by the South and East of Africa, especially in Cape province (South Africa), where are 70 species, by the Southwest of Europe, Mediterranean region and Macaronesian region (Canary, Madeira and Azores). All the Romuleas is then Euro-African. Our small Tyrrhenian endemism makes 6 million years must have a distribution much greater than the present one. At the end of Miocene, during the Messinian Period, the Mediterranean Sea had been dried almost completely and the South of France and its small coastal islands like Îles d’Hyères, Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Malta, the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula, North Africa and the Macaronesian region formed an all continuous one with very little water separated that them, so that during the million years that one so dry period lasted the animal and vegetal species could expand their populations to all this vast region. When the Mediterranean basin returned to fill of water, the Tyrrhenian mountains became islands and the species were isolate. Thus the peculiar present distribution is understood of the Romulea assumptionis.

The leaves are filiform, very thin and acute, among 30 and 100 millimeters in length and less than 0´8 millimeters of width and are arranged in a single plane forming an arc over the earth as the blades of a fan. Its color is green-grayish with reddish tones. Its filiform leaves clearly differentiate it from the other species that lives in the Balearics, the Romulea columnae, whose leaves are flattened, wider and of intense a green color. 

Curcuma longa, the soul of Curry

The Asian plant Curcuma longa of the Zingiberaceae family is one of the basic components of the Eastern condiment more universally well-known, the Curry. Nevertheless its cooking qualities were not the reason by which the Asians began to cultivate does already it more than 3,000 years, but the dyeing properties of the curcumin, the main active principle of its rhizome. The dyed wool acquired an attractive yellow color lemon. Also it was used to dye the skin of the face and the hands in the religious rituals. 

Inflorescence of Curcuma longa with the first flowers in the middle of the summer.

Rhizomes of Curcuma longa.

India is the producing and consuming major of this rhizome. The city of Sangli, located in the south of India, is the producing major of this spice. Dust turmeric mixes with other spices and aromatic plants to elaborate the curry, such as basil, cumin, saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, celery, coriander, onion dried in dust, ginger, nut nutmeg, pepper, cayenne pepper, pulp of tamarind, caraway, etc. varying the components and the proportion among them according to the tastes of each Asian region. Along with saffron, dust turmeric confers to curry its characteristic intense yellow color. The name of this Hindu condiment comes from the Kari word that means sauce in tamil language. 

Pulp of an intense orange color by its wealth in curcumin, that in the European Union is catalogued like colouring with the nourishing code E-100. Besides comprising of curry, also it is used to give the characteristic color to the mustard sauce. Added to stews of meat, rice, vegetables and tubercles it confers an appetizing yellow color to them similar to saffron, for that reason in Colombia, where it is a spice very appreciated, receives the name of root saffron. 

Vigorous plants of turmeric of two years of age at the height of summer, cultivated in Majorca from rhizomes. In spite of being a strictly tropical plant against all prognosis it lives very well in Mediterranean climate. The frosts do not affect to it since it spends the winter under earth in the form of hibernating rhizomes. Already well entered the spring of the yolks of rhizomes they bring forth new stems with very pretty, aromatic leaves rich in excretor cells that contain essential oils, fenilpropanoids and terpenoids. They live to total sun. The irrigation two or three times to the week in the months more droughts. In the middle of summer of the center of each stem they bring forth very pretty inflorescences, but they do not produce seeds, perhaps by the absence in Majorca of its natural pollenizers: insects like the bees and the butterflies and some Asian birds of the sorts Hornstedtia and Nicolaia. 
 

Six years ago my liking by the exotic thing took me to buy a tray of rhizomes of Curcuma longa coming from Thailand in a supermarket of Palma de Mallorca. It was the first time that I saw it and I nothing knew on this plant. In house I looked for information in Internet and already I discovered its relation with curry. It pricked the curiosity and I wanted to prove its flavor. Then it was happened me to prepare a plate with the exotic ingredients that finished buying: tubercles of Malanga, rhizomes of Turmeric, rhizomes of smaller Galanga, fruits of bitter Melon and Chinese Okra. Here you have the recipe. I assure to you that it knew to glory.

Malanga to turmeric with Chinese okra.

Exotic plate with malanga tubercles, Colocasia esculenta, bare and boiled with water, salt, small pieces of turmeric rhizomes, Curcuma longa, galanga rhizomes, Alpinia officinarum and bitter melon, Momordica charantia, to give color, flavor and aroma. Once the malanga is tender retire the bitter melon small pieces that already have given their flavor. In a frying pan with olive oil very thinly sliced of Chinese okra are fried, Luffa acutangula, that serve to adorn the plate and all this is accompanied with two boiled eggs.

Inflorescence in ear of Curcuma longa initiating the flowering in August.

From the antiquity their medicinal properties are known. It has been used to treat the malaria, hepatitis B and C, the dermatomicosis by its anti-fungal activity, the psoriasis, the diabetes, the immunodeficiencies, the cervical cancer, the hepatocarcinoma and the cancer of breast. Also it has been used like antioxidant to restrain the aging, anti-inflammatory in arthritis and antidepressant and anxiolitic in the mental and psychosomatic ailments. During the decade from 1990 to 2000 intense studies were realised in Hospital M.D. Anderson (Houston, Texas) to isolate its active principles and to demonstrate experimentally its therapeutic activity, especially against the cancer and AIDS. Their anti-carcinogenic properties seem to derive from the capacity of turmeric to induce the apoptosis or cellular death of the cancerous cells, respecting the healthy cells.

The ear of the inflorescence is formed by ready white bracts in spiral between which the yellow flowers arise.

Turmeric shares botanical family with other plants used like spices like ginger, Zingiber officinale, the cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum and smaller galanga, Alpinia officinarum. The Zingiberaceae are herbaceous plants with alternate, simple and distic leaves, that is to say, inserted or placed in two rows and ready so that each row forms a plane approximately. Their flowers have an unique functional stamen with two thecas and a great petaloid label of yellow color formed by the fusion of two staminodes. They are very ephemeral, because they last a single day, but the abundant nectar that produces facilitates the fertilization when attracting the pollenizers. 

Flower of Curcuma longa with the detail of the petaloid label similar to the one of the orchids of the Ophrys sort and the two thecas of unique stamen in its interior. The feminine part, the gynoecium, is formed by a trilocular ovary and a straight, filiform and whole style with nectar glands in its base, resting on functional stamen and is surrounded by the two thecas in its superior part. The fruit is a capsule full of seeds surrounded by an aril.