Eucodonia 'Adele' Rhizome, A Closer Look

 Here is a Eucodonia rhizome. A rhizome is defined by the fine folks at Wikipedia as "characteristically a horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes."

It's one of the ways that gesneriads reproduce and one of the three types of root systems that are found in the Gesneriad family. The root types include fibrous roots, tuberous roots and our featured rhizomatous roots!

 In the first photo you saw a little thing that looks like a pine cone with a central brownish stem (to the right hand side). Sort of a cute little deal.

A closer look at the side of the 'pine cone' shows that it's made of small scales that are attached at the central brown stem and that each of the scales is simply COVERED with our now seemingly standard gesneriad hair! I was once again surprised to see that these structures had hair too!

Here two scales sit side by side. You don't notice the hairs on the flat surface because of the way the picture is taken but they show up on the edges nicely, along with some remnants of the soil that the rhizome was taken out of.

This is pretty cool. This is a closeup of that little brown central stem that the scales all attach to.... and IT HAS HAIR TOO!

I'm just so impressed that everything is coming up fuzzy.

 Here are more of the scales and because of proper lighting all the translucent hair do show up in better detail. They really do cover the surface of the scales.

And here's one more end on shot with the darkish patch the out-of-focus central stem and some of the topmost scales pictured. Each one of the scales, if detached and planted has the potential to make an entire new plant, sort of like planting a seed. Cool eh???

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