10

Semper aliquid novi ex Africa, so Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79) declared.

Always something new out of Africa...
...Isak Dinesen, real name Karen Blixen (1885-1962), she was a Danish Baroness, wrote the book...

...Robert Redford (1936-) flew the plane.
There is always something new from the blackberry (rubus fruticosus) as well...over 2000 varieties, or micro-species have been recorded.

The morphology of blackberry leaf groups (see page 3)proved to be so interesting that we were sorry to have to wait till next summer to check out the structure of the flowers.

Then a couple of plants decided to flower in December.

Fig 44

Fig 45

The flower in Fig 44 opened fully outdoors and took a bit of a beating from the weather. Nonetheless it’s clear that the order of petal growth, revealed by petal sizes, is an opposite of that shown by the leaves in Fig 45

(Petal c in Fig 44 is siamesed, though a little hard to see.)

The flowers below came from a single bud group, picked at the same time as Fig 44, from a different plant. They bloomed indoors. The three flowers opened fully, one at a time, over three days.

Fig 46

Fig 47

Fig 48

Some of the measurements in Figs 46, 47, and 48 are very close calls...

...except for the e’s, which in all cases are the smallest petals and occupy the place taken by largest, first formed, leaves, the a’s, shown in Fig 45 and, on page 3,
in Figs 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.

Download, enlarge, measure for yourself...and email us if your close calls are different