Pterospora andromedea (woodland pinedrop) (forest next to East Sentinel Geyser, Yellowstone, Wyoming, USA) 2 (19944619030)

Description:

Pterospora andromedea Nuttall, 1818 - woodland pinedrop in Wyoming, USA (7 July 2015). Plants are multicellular, photosynthesizing eucaryotes. Most species occupy terrestrial environments, but they also occur in freshwater and saltwater aquatic environments. The oldest known land plants in the fossil record are Ordovician to Silurian. Land plant body fossils are known in Silurian sedimentary rocks - they are small and simple plants (e.g., Cooksonia). Fossil root traces in paleosol horizons are known in the Ordovician. During the Devonian, the first trees and forests appeared. Earth's initial forestation event occurred during the Middle to Late Paleozoic. Earth's continents have been partly to mostly covered with forests ever since the Late Devonian. Occasional mass extinction events temporarily removed much of Earth's plant ecosystems - this occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary (251 million years ago) and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 million years ago). The most conspicuous group of living plants is the angiosperms, the flowering plants. They first unambiguously appeared in the fossil record during the Cretaceous. They quickly dominated Earth's terrestrial ecosystems, and have dominated ever since. This domination was due to the evolutionary success of flowers, which are structures that greatly aid angiosperm reproduction. The odd-looking plant shown above is a pinedrop, which is related to the blueberry, but is itself a highly unusual flowering plant. Pinedrops are achlorotic, non-photosynthesizing parasites on conifer trees (actually, pinedrops are parasitic on Rhizopogon fungi that parasitize conifer roots). The lack of chlorophyll accounts for their non-green coloration. Each small, subrounded structure on the upper stem is a flower. These plants are native to North America and are most commonly encountered in mountainous conifer forests in western America, southwestern Canada, and Mexico. Classification: Plantae, Angiospermophyta, Ericales, Ericaceae Locality: forest just east of East Sentinel Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin, western Yellowstone National Park, northwestern Wyoming, USA (~44° 28' 32.96" North, 110° 50' 37.97" West) More info. at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterospora