What happened to Thismia Americana? Check out this post at RealClearScience for a story I found fascinating—the weird saga of Thismia Americana:
In August 1912, University of Chicago graduate student Norma Pfeiffer was exploring a damp, low-lying prairie near the wetlands surrounding Chicago’s Lake Calumet when she spotted a small, glabrous, white plant with delicate streaks of blue-green ringing the mouth of the flower. It was unlike anything else in the surrounding area.
Indeed, as she soon realized after finding additional specimens over the ensuing months, the plant was unlike anything else in the entire country.
Read the whole thing.
I’d bet a shiny new dime it was a foreign invader. If there are any samples left in collections anywhere, their DNA should be analyzed.
Meanwhile, I vote that T. Americana be declared the official Chicago plant. Under the circumstances it would be appropriate.
Relocating that tiny plant (whose living relatives are all tropical or grow in the southern hemisphere) has been a dream of countless botanists over the years. Norma Pfeiffer, who discovered, collected, and described this species, was quite interesting in her own right, living to be 100.
Just out of idle curiosity, are you four meters tall, green, and have four arms? 😉