Gloxinia 'Dragon Song' up close and personal

 This is a single flower from a Gloxinia 'Dragon Song'. It's got the neat pouch-shaped bottom to the flower.

These bloom on an inflorescence that is tall and holds many small flowers above the foliage. Cool looking plant with nice shiny dark colored foliage.

 I'm intrigued by what else you can see if you go beyond just looking at the obvious... the color and shape of the flower.

I can see that like most gesneriads it has the anthers joined in the middle.

I had to include an outside shot too because the gesneriad flowers are also almost always covered, like the rest of the plant, in 'hair'.

 A good part of the petals are cut off in this shot to make it easier to see the pistal and stamen of the plant.

If you look closely you see the top of the pollen sacs, and towards the front of the photo you see it is brighter white and that is some of the pollen breaking it's way out of the pollen sac almost ready to pollinate another flower.

 The 'top' side of the pollen sacs, nicely joined. Even the filaments (the tall things that hold up the anthers) have hair on them!

 A little closer look which, let's face it, is cool looking.

 The front white object is the female part, the pistil, of which you can see the top knob part (the stigma) and just a little of the style.

It appears to have some pollen clinging to it. It might also be contamination from beating up the blossom and cutting away some of the petals to get the view.

 This is the 'bottom' side view of the pollen sacs with some of the pollen ready to be released out into the world.

If a pollinator like a bee or a fly comes along and investigates the interior of the blossom, some of this pollen will likely stick to the insect and it will be transported over to the next flower visited.

Every type of flower has a distinct type of pollen. Sometimes pollen from prehistoric times is also found in fossils and scientists can identify what sorts of plants were present when that flower was alive thousands and thousands of years ago.

Questions???

Commets???