English: Visser's hydnora.
Region: southwestern Namibia, northwestern South Africa.
Content: tannins.
BotanyHerb; subterranean; holoparasitic, lacks chlorophyll, depends entirely on its hosts, Euphorbia gregaria or Euphorbia gummifera.
Root: rhizomes, reddish to pink, brown; warty; spreads laterally through the soil; bumps on the rhizome can differentiate into haustoria, specialized organs for parasitizing the host plant, flower buds, or bifurcations of the rhizome.
Leaves: lacking.
Flower: large fleshy; only emerging part; tepals longest of all Hydnora species, 6 to 9 cm long.
Pollination: involves a trap and release mechanism where dermestid beetles are detained for several days, then released dusted with pollen.
Fruit: large berry; buried or just at the soil surface; with 1000's seeds.
Seeds: small, < 1mm diameter.
TaxonomyThe family
Hydnoraceae has been submerged within the
Aristolochiaceae in the
Piperales, based on a modern phylogenetic study. The plastome of
Hydnora visseri is highly reduced, relative to photosynthetic plants, with only 27K base pairs, one of the smallest plastid genomes among flowering plants. As compared to the chloroplast genome of its closest photosynthetic relatives