NEW DISCOVERIES!

BUNCHBERRY

I love learning new things. And every time I go out into nature, I come back with another little bit of knowledge. For example, I just got back from the Adirondacks in way up north New York. While there, I came upon a beautiful plant way up high on Little Whiteface Mountain. So I snapped a photo and tried to identify it when I returned home. Turns out the plant is bunchberry and it's a pretty unusual plant!

DOGWOOD TREE

Bunchberry is sometimes called dwarf dogwood, because the bunchberry "flower" looks a lot like a dogwood flower. (We have a dogwood in the McDonald Avenue side school garden; it blooms in spring.) But dogwoods are trees and bunchberries are plants. Also, the white "petals" of the bunchberry are not petals at all; they are leaves. The plant's teeny, tiny flowers are actually inside the middle of the four white leaves.

Another cool thing about bunchberry is that it shoots its pollen projectile-style. The little flowers have hair triggers, so when a bee or other insect brushes by the hairs, the pollen shoots out in a puff and covers the unsuspecting bee, who then carries the pollen off to another bunchberry plant. Now that's an amazing ADAPTATION!