Strongylodon macrobotrys
Common Name: Jade Vine, Bayou, Tayabak
Family: Leguminosae/ Fabaceae
Welcome to the first entry of the UW Greenhouse Insiders blog. This blog will feature the beautiful and curious plants that are found in University of Washington’s Botany Greenhouse. Please read each entry as an invitation to come visit the greenhouse to see, smell, and appreciate these spectacular plants up close.
Starting off the blog with a bang, is the eye-catching Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys). This vine grows wild in damp rainforest habitats in the Philippines where the tough woody stems twine and twist up neighboring trees. The Jade Vine is considered vulnerable to extinction in its native habitat because of rapid rainforest destruction.
The Jade Vine’s luminous blue green flowers hang down in clusters up to 9 feet long called pseudoracemes. The light color of the flowers pops out at dusk, allowing the bats that pollinate the Jade Vine to easily see it. These bat pollinators are rewarded for their work. Just imagine them hanging upside down from the flowers, sipping the Jade Vine’s sweet nectar.
The Jade Vine’s unique pigment resides in the sap of the flower’s epidermal cells. Biochemists studying this flower color have found that these epidermal cells are exceptionally alkaline with an average pH of 7.9 while the colorless inner floral tissue has a neutral pH of about 5.6.
With two flower clusters fully in bloom and two more nearly there, the next couple weeks will be prime time to stop by Room 5 to check out the exotic Jade Vine.
RESOURCES:
University of the Philippines Science Education Center. Plants of the Philippines. Quezon City : University of the Philippines Press, 1971.
Kew Royal Botanic Garden: http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/plants-fungi/strongylodon-macrobotrys-jade-vine
Kosaku Takeda, Aki Fujii, Yohko Senda, Tsukasa Iwashina. “Greenish blue flower colour of Strongylodon macrobotrys.” Biochemical Systematics and Ecology. Volume 38, Issue 4. August 2010. Pages 630-633, ISSN 0305-1978. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305197810001432
UW Botany Greenhouse Homepage: http://www.biology.washington.edu/greenhouse/collection.html
UW Greenhouse Insiders 