Specimen · N°001 · Wind · ▶ Film
Ventiflora evanidaNightdew Ring
The flower vanishes with the dawn.
FOUND 50.5°S 73.0°W · Wind-swept grassland of southern Patagonia · ✝ EX · Last seen 1975
The flower vanishes with the dawn.
A low perennial 8–14 cm tall. It presses to the rock to escape the wind, spreading slender silver-grey leaves in a radial rosette. The short, reddish-brown stem swells its basal water-storing tissue only after rain. The flowers are pale blue-grey saucers with a translucent calyx. It blooms for a single night; before dawn the calyx and corolla lose moisture and shrink to a thin film, so by morning only a small damp ring remains in the hollow of the rock.
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By morning, only a ring remains.
That is the only proof it bloomed.
The windswept grassland of southern Patagonia.
Just before the dry season, on rain-soaked ledges, the Nightdew Ring shows itself for a single night.
Lower than a palm, it spreads silver-grey leaves flat to the ground.
After rain, a small water-storing tissue at its base swells, and at night it opens a pale blue-grey flower.
In two observations on basalt ledges after rain, I saw almost no floral visitors. The stamens bend toward the stigma before the corolla is fully open, suggesting that self-pollination is completed first. On nearly windless nights, however, minute dipterans were seen walking inside the calyx, leaving a narrow possibility for occasional outcrossing.
By the following morning, a few small brown grains sometimes remain outside the withered ring. When wetted, their coats become mucilaginous and adhere to fine fissures in the basalt. The center of an old track is too mobile with grit, but shallow ledges just beyond it allow the drying mucilage to anchor seeds, explaining the plant's small arc-shaped colonies.
Without flowers, the plant presses its silver-gray leaves flat against the rock and merges visually with lichens or small cushion plants. As the dry season begins, its water-storage tissue contracts and the reddish brown stem sinks into the shade of fissures, likely appearing to collectors as an unremarkable crust. The flower is the key to identification, yet it exists only for one night after rain.
