Aeschynanthus marmoratus Up Close and Personal!

This is a flower from an Aeschynanthus marmoratus!


It's a really rather cool flower but I suspect sometimes overlooked because it's primarily green with it's rather flashy colors left to just the interior lip of the flower.


This is a close up shot of the calyx when it's been detached from the petals. It's got a nice bit of bright red hair on it.

These are close ups of the pollen sacs and how they are connected, as is characteristic of many in the family Gesneriad.











A bit closer shot. Interesting surface of the anther here.

These following pictures were of a leaf that I snapped to see what was inside. Sometimes the stringy stuff (vascular tissue) doesn't break right off and you get to get a closer look at it. What follows was completely unexpected and one of the coolest things I've accidentally found looking through the scope.

The "fibers" were quite transparent and looked sort of spiraled, so I got come closer looks at them.

The fibers were formed in a spring-like spiral. I really like this!

A little flower dissection happened because I wanted to see if there was anything interesting going on where the stamen were attached to the flower tube (petals). The razor blade shows the point where the filament attaches. I thought this would be cool and it turns out to be a non-event. I guess the vascular tissue was really much cooler. 

The pictures do show how the cells are pigmented to give the flower it's coloration and also how they align in the tissue. Too bad I can't get more magnification to see if we could see any of the individual cells.....

Comments???? Questions????