Happy Mystery Monday! Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is red maple flowers, Acer rubrum, pictured in the photo below:
The red maple flowers shown here are female. They are dark, deep red with sticky, fuzzy stigmas that extend past the petals and catch pollen floating by. Clusters of red maple flowers are especially striking against a clear, blue Winter sky.
Maple tree flowers are primarily wind-pollinated. As the flowers fade, the fruit – which is often showier than the flowers – appears. The fruit, botanically classified as a schizocarp, is split into two-winged structures called samaras. The samaras dangle on the ends of branches by thin pedicels, or stalks. They remain on the tree for about a month after the Spring foliage emerges and until the wind disperses them.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.
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