Thursday, January 18, 2007

cast in iron

The Aspidistra (Aspidistra elatior) better know as the cast iron plant was a very popular indoor foliage plant in the Victorian era. To the best of my knowledge it is not related to any Cretaceous plant species, it just looks a lot like some of them. It also has the massive advantage that it is thriving in the dry shady areas under the tree ferns.

Dried out aspidistra struggling in semi-sun healthy aspidistra flurishing in the shade

They are angiosperms (flowering plants), but I haven't seen any flowers, apparently they occur at soil level and are only pollinated by terrestrial Amphipods little shrimp like creatures, (such as sand fleas, and other little bitty varmites). The angiosperms developed late in the jurrasic and spread extensively in the late cretaceous, particularly in the northern continent of laurasia.

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