Plant Of The Week Hydnora Africana

Hydnora africana is an achlorophyllous plant in the family Hydnoraceae, native to southern Africa that is parasitic on the roots of members of the Euphorbiaceae family. The plant grows underground, except for a fleshy flower that emerges above ground and emits an odor of feces to attract its natural pollinators, dung beetles and carrion beetles. The flowers act as temporary traps, retaining the beetles that enter long enough for them to pick up pollen. It is also called jakkalskos or jackal food. The genus name comes from the Greek word hydon, which translates to being like a fungus, and the specific epithet africana means to be from Africa Hydrona africana is a most bizarre looking desert plant native to Africa. No one can easily identify hydnora africana as a plant because of this unnatural physical appearance, similar to that of fungi.

This plat is completely leafless in nature and have deep brown colored flesh stem. This plant becomes more visible only upon the blooming time. The flowers of hydnora africana have a spherical shape, brown outside and orange color inside. It also produce pungent odor to attract bees for pollination.

These plants do not have chlorophyll and do not perform photosynthesis. They obtain their nutrients from a host plant, such as a species of Euphorbia. Hydnora africana has an enzyme which allows it to dissolve some of the roots of its host plants in order to attach to them. Hydnora africana attaches to the roots of the host and takes some of the nutrients that it makes from photosynthesis. It has a fleshy peachy-orange flower that emerges from the ground after a heavy rainfall. Insects that pollinate the flowers do so by burying themselves in the sepals of the flowers through the very strong fibers that hold the sepals together. After the insects have been in the flowers for a couple of days, the flower emerges and opens releasing the insects to spread the pollen to other flowers in the area.

Hydnora africana has a very strong and unpleasant smell. This smell is generated from the osmophores, which is a white spongy area in the inner surface of the tepals that eventually changes color to grey. Osmophores were first called "bait bodies" by Harmes. Burger et al. concluded that the odor is made up of dimethyl disulfide and dimethyl trisulfide. These odors are also found in dead-horse arum.

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