Don’s Tips: Weird Plants

Eucalyptus leaves

Gum leaves facing side-on.

Plants can be downright weird!

For instance, gum trees turn their leaves side-on to the sun. Normally plants from overseas have leaves that face the sun like solar panels, but due to the vicious Aussie sun, gum trees turn their leaves side on to avoid loss of water.

Australia has two species of orchids that live entirely underground and have no green leaves on any other green parts at all. They perform a little like fungi in the soil. Only their tiny flowers ever poke into the light of day!

Perhaps the wild fig is one of the weirdest! Its flowers grow inside the fruit and a wasp wriggles inside to pollinate the flowers. When you eat wild figs you are also eating wasp maggots!

By the way, the only fig native to the Holy Land is a highly abrasive sandpaper fig. Imagine poor Adam and Eve wearing these leaves on that tender skin.

Ouch!

Hooroo!