Zootheca latrinalisBeast-lodge Pitcher

In full pools, Horadiza cataingensis touches the stone without making roots. When transferred to a collecting jar, the epidermis of the stem and threadlike leaves becomes faintly mucilaginous, holding fine mud and fragments of diatoms. The absence of roots seems not a deficiency, but a means of absorbing settled organic matter and dissolved salts through the whole body in a short-lived pool. If anchoring organs formed too early, fluctuating water would tear the plant apart.

The flower opens at the surface, but it does not appear built to wait for insects. On clear mornings the cup-shaped blossom closes within half a day, and the anthers lean onto the stigma. Some pollen may be moved by wind, but most seed set is probably selfed. Just before the water withdraws, sticky minute seeds gather at the bases of the white root hairs and are pressed into granite pores and weathered feldspar grooves. The root trace is not a grave marker, but a storage place for the next rains.

Seen only as a rainy-season specimen, Hourroot Pool-anchor is scarcely separable from other small aquatic herbs. Its flowers and leaves are soft, and their useful characters collapse in a pressed sheet. The decisive character, the eruption of root hairs, occurs only for a few hours after the water falls below ankle depth; by then collectors would likely have avoided the whitening, drying stone. The vague entries in older lists for “floating herbs of temporary waters” may well have included this plant.