Flowers are one of the many ways nature shows its beauty. Whether its the bright and poppy colours or the intrinsic patterns that each flower uniquely possesses, they have a rare charm. However, their lives are quite short, and with time they wither and eventually turn to dust.
However, researchers have now found a flower that’s managed to look magnificent for nearly a hundred million years.
OSU
Yes, this statement might sound like hyperbole, but a research team from Oregon State University has actually found a flower that continues to bloom after millions of years. The flower was trapped in Burmese amber and the petals and its form remains intact as if it was plucked not too long ago.
George Poinar Jr., professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science explains, “This isn’t quite a Christmas flower but it is a beauty, especially considering it was part of a forest that existed 100 million years ago. The male flower is tiny, about 2 millimetres across, but it has some 50 stamens arranged like a spiral, with anthers pointing toward the sky.”
The stamen of the flower possesses an anther -- a head that produces pollen -- as well as a filament that connects the anther to the flower. According to Poinar, the flower became trapped in amber on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana and travelled on a continental plate some 4,000 miles across the ocean from Australia to Southeast Asia.
Poinar added, “Despite being so small, the detail still remaining is amazing. Our specimen was probably part of a cluster on the plant that contained many similar flowers, some possibly female.”
OSU
The flower, according to researchers, is in fact, a new genus and species. The research team has named this trapped flower Valviloculus pleristaminis. The team explains, "Valva is the Latin term for the leaf on a folding door, loculus means compartment, plerus refers to many, and staminis reflects the flower's dozens of male sex organs."
The Link Lonk
December 25, 2020 at 03:00PM
https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/science-and-future/flower-trapped-in-amber-is-100-million-years-old-with-petals-still-intact-530448.html
Flower Trapped In Amber Is 100 Million Years Old With Petals Still Intact - India Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=Flower&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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