Petrofissura ephemeraCleftkeeper Moss-bloom

The flowers open as small white stars only during clear morning intervals, and the anthers already touch the stigma before full expansion. A plant with only a few days above ground cannot depend on visitors, so seed set appears largely secured by self-compatibility. Yet once, on a still morning, minute halictid bees dusted with pollen moved between flowers in the same hollow. The stand is probably kept from becoming a perfect clone by this slight outcrossing, together with the mixing of seed-bank cohorts from different years.

The capsule does not open along a dry seam; it loosens only after receiving the next drops of rain. The short stem holds it a few centimeters above the rock, so splashing water lifts the thin mud film and carries the fine seeds only as far as the rim of the same hollow. No mechanism for long-distance dispersal is evident. This matches the plant’s patchy occurrence, not across the whole plateau, but along the outlines of older rain pools.

One old herbarium sheet I examined held a flowerless fragment filed among undetermined small wetland herbs resembling Lindernia. Its label gave only “early monsoon,” with no note of the three wetting and drying cycles. Visit the plateau in the regular rains and the plant has already collapsed; visit in the dry season and only sandy mud remains. It was probably not wholly undiscovered, but passed once through the record without its conditions being understood.