Hidden flowers stephanie etching free#

Back at the lab, they dusted the anthers of some male flowers with powdered dye and watched as the now pink-cheeked lizards spread the dye (and thus the pollen) on the reproductive parts of the female flowers. After catching some of the lizards, the scientists were able to confirm that, thanks to the adhesive properties of the very sticky nectar, the lizards were carrying Guthriea pollen on their smooth, scaly snouts.īy restricting the lizards’ access to some of the plants, they also found that after a few weeks there were 95% fewer fruits on the plants not visited by lizards. For all we know, there are loads of other examples.”Īfter tweaking the camera settings (being cold-blooded, lizards aren’t very good at triggering heat sensors), the team got more footage of the lizards devouring the nectar (which, Cozien says, tastes “absolutely vile” to humans, “like bitter, burnt plastic”) at all times of the day and throughout the flowering season. Partly because lizard pollination often occurs in harsh, inaccessible or disturbed environments, pollination experts around the world are, Cozien admits, “still trying to work out what floral traits are important for the attraction of lizards, why it evolves where it does, and how important pollination by lizards really is.

Photograph: Leonie Bolleursīut visiting a flower is very different to pollinating it, Cozien says, “especially because they often eat the flowers!” Lizards have only been shown to be important for pollination of “at most five” species in the world, and only one species of plant was known at the time to use reptiles as its primary pollinator. Sandy-Lynn Steenhuisen, left, and Ruth Cozien look for pollen on a lizard. They were fairly convinced that the plants were being pollinated by nocturnal rodents, and initially set the cameras to only record at night. The plants’ flowers were so low to the ground that simply setting the camera traps was a challenge which involved either digging into the stony ground (“and trying not to accidentally kick a rock on to a hiker below”) or using the very steep terrain to aim the shot “up the plant’s skirt”, says Cozien. “I’ve never been involved in such a physically demanding project,” says Steenhuisen, who frequently found herself lagging behind trail-runners Cozien and Van der Niet. They often left the site in complete darkness, as thick mist swirled around them. Leaving their base at around 6am, the group spent more than 12 hours on the mountain every day, lugging everything from motion-trigger cameras to rodent traps and peanut butter bait balls up and down the steep slopes the Guthriea call home in their quest to work out who was pollinating the flowers.

Hidden flowers stephanie etching free#

It didn’t take much to persuade Dr Sandy-Lynn Steenhuisen at the University of the Free State’s department of plant sciences and Prof Steven Johnson of the Centre for Functional Biodiversity at KwaZulu-Natal to join the couple on a two-week “working holiday” in the mountains. Male and female Guthriea capensis flowers.