Thermospica gradataEmberstep Torch

At dusk I tied thread markers to day-form and night-form branches on the same gravel slope. The night-form flowers moistened their stigmas after sunset, and the pale tubular corollas bore brief entry marks from small nocturnal moths and minute beetles. Pollen transfer was sparse, yet a few bagged flowers still set fruit near the end of the dry season. Self-compatibility, more than strict isolation, seems to sustain this shrub where visits are unreliable.

Seedlings did not occupy the whole burned surface. They lined only the narrow bands where an iron probe struck black root fragments fifteen to thirty centimeters below. When dry, the capsules dropped seed into the gravel, and the first winter rains fixed them along the margins of charred roots. Phenols and smoke-derived compounds from the charcoal seem less like a sudden transformative signal than a slow tuner, shifting stomatal rhythm and floral timing toward night over several days.

Rarity alone does not explain why this shrub remained poorly recorded. In daytime surveys the night-form flowers are closed, leaving only gray-green leaves and stiff twigs, easily bundled with known xeric thicket shrubs. The night-form plants also occur in patches over charred root bands; a few steps aside, only ordinary day-flowering plants remain. Its absence was written less in the plant itself than in the hour of collecting and the path taken across the slope.