Magic Plants That Hide: How Alpine Flowers Use Camouflage!
🌿 Hey kids! Have you ever played hide and seek? Well, guess what? There’s a special plant high up in the mountains that plays hide and seek every day! It’s called Corydalis hemidicentra, and it has an amazing secret.
This cool plant grows on the rocky slopes of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau in the Chinese mainland. Some of these plants have ordinary green leaves, but others have leaves that are rocky-gray. Why? Because they are masters of disguise!
Scientists discovered that the gray leaves help the plant blend in with the rocks around it. This is called camouflage. The gray color comes from something called anthocyanins (say: an-tho-SY-an-ins). These are pigments that can make things look reddish, purple, or grayish.
🐛 But why does the plant need to hide? Well, there are hungry caterpillars from Parnassius butterflies that love to munch on these plants. By blending in with the rocks, the gray-leaved plants can hide from the caterpillars and stay safe.
For over ten years, scientists like Professor Liu Jianquan from Lanzhou University studied these plants. They found out that the camouflaged plants have stayed strong and stable over hundreds of years. Meanwhile, the caterpillars didn’t do so well in places where the plants could hide.
Isn’t it amazing how nature works? 🌸 These findings help us understand how plants and animals interact and how they can change over time to survive.
The study was published in a famous science journal called Nature Ecology & Evolution. Maybe one day, you’ll discover something amazing in nature too!
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
