p o l l i n at i o n

Klein Karoo buzz

Why unrelated flowers look the same
by Jan Vlok
f you really want to have a great time in the Klein Karoo get out of your car, take a walk through the veld and look carefully. The gems and secrets of the Klein Karoo* are reserved only for those who take time to look closely. The tranquil landscapes of the Klein Karoo harbour more than 3 200 plant species, which render this region one of the very special corners of the world. At a glance these statistics may be hard to believe, as when you drive through the area most of the plants look rather similar. Somehow our intuition is that different plant species should look very different, at least in terms of flower colour or shape. Well think again. Darwin and Wallace taught us that even flower shape and colour is subject to the natural selection process. This means that closely related species may have flowers that look very different, while completely unrelated plants may have similar looking flowers. The determining factor is the picture or search image that a local efficient pollinator has in its mind. It will only visit and perhaps pollinate those flowers that fit the image of a flower that
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These four unrelated species look similar because they attract the same pollinator a long-tongued fly. ABOVE: Disa schlechteriana. RIGHT: Gladiolus leptosiphon. BELOW RIGHT: Pelargonium tetragonum. BOTTOM RIGHT: Tritonia pallida. Photos: Jan Vlok. will fulfil its needs. So, when you have a superpollinator around, different plants can end up having rather similar looking flowers as they all compete to attract the attention of such a pollinator to ensure that their flowers will produce seed. One of these super-efficient pollinators of the Klein Karoo is a long-tongued fly that moves at an incredible speed, focuses with amazing accuracy on its target spends a second extracting nectar from a flower and then moves along rapidly to its next target. It is on the wing in late spring and early summer, and sometimes one is lucky to see them. These fighter planes of the Klein Karoo have a definite search image for flowers at which they can re-fuel on nectar. The image they hunt down is a creamy-white flower

ideally marked with a few blue-purple lines to indicate the point where they must insert their tongues to reach the nectar. For a flower to be successfully pollinated it must have a nectar tube about 55 mm long. A long tube ensures that the fly moves close enough to touch the anthers or stigma of the flower. Without receiving or releasing pollen via the pollinator there will be no new generation for the plant, and it will go extinct. So dont be surprised if several creamywhite flowers that looked the same from the car turn out to be very different species. Examples of such species that flower in late spring and early summer in the Klein Karoo are Disa schlechteriana, Gladiolus leptosiphon, Pelargonium tetragonum and Tritonia pallida. Crucial in the process of pollination is the length of the flower tube that contains the nectar. I was recently amazed to note the variance in the spur length of Disa schlechteriana (from 45-70 mm). The only plants not successfully pollinated were those with short spurs (about 40 mm long). Plants with longer spurs (50 mm and longer) all had flowers that were pollinated. In the shortspurred plants the pollinator probably came around, but took the nectar without touching the vital parts of the flower. So selection in Nature continues; just too bad if you were born with genes that say you must have short spurs, which equals no babies and therefore no survival. But maybe a shorter-tongued insect might find those short-spurred plants, pollinate them successfully, and so start a

whole new selection process that may result in a new species. * The Klein Karoo or Little Karoo is the area that lies between the coastal (Langeberg to Tsitsikamma) and inland (Witteberg, Swartberg to Baviaanskloof ) mountain ranges of the southern Cape. The area lies roughly between the towns of Montagu (in the west) and Uniondale (in the east). It is largely an extended valley, but it has its own isolated mountains (Warmwaterberg, Touwsberg, Rooiberg, Gamkaberg and Kamanassie).

Look out for the new BotSoc Wild Flower Guide, number 13, Wild Flowers of the Klein Karoo by Jan Vlok, which is due to be published very soon.

ABOVE: To ensure that the pollinator transports pollen from one plant to the next these plants must have a nectar tube of about 55 mm long. The partially dissected flowers of Pelargonium tetragonum (top) and Gladiolus floribundus (below) show how the anthers are presented at a similar position to ensure that the pollinator collects pollen on his body. BELOW: Gladiolus floribundus. BELOW LEFT: Spitskop in the Swartberg with winter snow. Note the very different habitats in the foreground. Photos: Jan Vlok.

MARCH 2009

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