Hairy-fruit Bluebush
Whole
Hairy-fruit Bluebush
Above
Animals
Plants
Info
| Hairy-fruit Bluebush Whole | | Hairy-fruit Bluebush Above | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Plants (Plantae) - Land Plants (Charophyta) - Land Plants (Equisetopsida) | ||||||||||||||
| Order: | Betalains (Caryophyllales) | |||||||||||||||
| Family: | Goosefoot (Chenopodiaceae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||||
| Species: | Hairy-fruit Bluebush (Maireana trichoptera)| This Photo: | 🔍Whole, Grazed🔎 | Other name: | Mallee Bluebush | Thank you Dr Kym Nicolson for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA), the Riverland and elsewhere One of the most abundant plants we have on Ellura. You can see the flowers in the middle of "pods", which then die off and the fruit forms behind; basically the "pods" turns into flat wings with seed in the middle. The wing helps with wind dispersal. The wings dry to a papery brown brittle disk. We often tell people that the binomial name "trichoptera" reminds me that this plant often has the fruit winding up the stem in 3 faces ("tri"). Back to back, can't see the fruit stem or leaves. BUT trichoptera actually means/translates to something completely different "tricho" = hairy & "ptera" = wing. Hairy wing, or Hairy-fruit. Unfortunately many bluebushes (Maireana sp) have hairy fruits, so the name isn't really helping identify the uniqueness of this plant. These can be straggly insignificant looking affairs, thru to highly colourful (green, apricot through to burgundy tones, etc) beautiful voluptuous stems. For Maireana the fruit is the diagnostic feature. With grazing the plants can often have the same habit. While there is nothing like an unblemished Erect Mallee Bluebush, one that's grazed, dried, damaged, etc, looks exactly the same as many other bluebushes. Both Pearl Bluebush & Radiant Bluebush have very unique habits and leaves that can easily separate them from others (usually).
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