Monday, April 1, 2013

Random plant event: Rhipsalis baccifera

I did not know that Rhipsalis baccifera berries were purple, until a couple weeks ago when I saw these at the ex-job.


I was surprised, because the berries on my NOID Rhipsalis,1 as well as the berries on Pseudorhipsalis ramulosa, are both white. (P. ramulosa is apparently less closely related to the genus Rhipsalis than it looks, but I didn't know that until very recently either.) That's not that much to go on, but it seemed reasonable to think that the other Rhipsalis species probably also had white berries. Live and learn. Apparently some of them have black berries, even.

These are the flowers:


Not dramatic and flashy, obviously, but apparently they get the job done.

Here's a wider view, to give you some perspective on the size:


So there's that.

In other news: I may have an announcement of sorts relatively soon, but 1) it's not what you're thinking so don't go getting all excited,2 and 2) I didn't want to make any announcements on April Fool's Day, for what I would hope would be obvious reasons. So let's say sometime in the next week.

-

1 An Exotic Angel plant, so the ID is kind of inherently questionable. According to their website, it's Rhipsalis micrantha, but the pictures of R. micrantha that show up in search engines don't look much like my plant. The pictures do look like the photo on the EA website, but that could just mean that EA misidentified it, something they're extremely prone to do, when they bother to identify things at all.
Having said that: it's not like I can come up with any Rhipsalis species that look like what I've got at all. The only photos I could find that looked like my plant were either on the EA website itself, or plants that looked like they were probably EA plants before purchase. So I'm content to just call it a NOID.
2 (or somber: it's not that announcement either)


3 comments:

The Phytophactor said...

Nice little "mistletoe" berries, sort of sticky, just right for being dispersed to another tree canopy by birds.

Ivynettle said...

Seems to be the seasons for Rhipsalis berries (but the ones at my job aren't ripe yet).

And, yeah, announcements on April 1st... I just ran into that problem myself!

Diane C said...

I enjoyed the article you sighted as well as your pictures.