I was looking for a flower whose color would make the transition from green to blue and which could have been more suitable than the jade vine?
The plant is native to Philippines and it’s grown in gardens all over the world.
The color, which we find impressive due to its rarity in the plant world, is not very attractive to insects, instead it seems to have a special brightness during the night in the moon light, thus attracting bats. As the bat drinks the nectar from the center of the flower, the keel bends, releasing the anthers and leaving pollen on the head and back of the bat, similar to the mechanism I observed in lupine.
We are familiar with the morphology of this type of flower because we have drawn it twice (Robinia pseudoacacia and Vicia grandiflora): a standard petal, 2 outer wings and the keel enclosing the reproductive parts.
If the first two drawings were front views, in this video I will make a drawing from the side of the flower, its shape looks extraordinarily expressive.
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