Thismia americana facts for kids

Thismia americana, known as thismia or banded Trinity was a species of flowering plant that was first described by Norma Etta Pfeiffer in 1914 as living in wetlands surrounding Chicago's Lake Calumet. The specimen was found in what was then a wet-mesic sand prairie at 119th Street and Torrence Avenue in what would become the industrial neighborhood of South Deering. The plant has not been seen since 1916, and the ground where it was observed has since been extensively altered by industrial development. The species is believed to be extinct. Several extensive searches have not uncovered any specimens of the vanished species.

Life cycle

Thismia americana drew interest from botanists because of its extremely specialized ecological niche. T. americana lacked chlorophyll. Instead of converting solar energy, the flowering plant was a mycoheterotroph, utilizing local fungi of the southern Lake Michigan wetlands for its nourishment. The plant enjoyed a short, shy life cycle above ground; in July, its roots would sprout a tiny flowering head, which produced a white flower the size of a jewelry bead.

Thismia americana was published by University of Chicago botanical Ph.D. candidate Norma Etta Pfeiffer, who became the first and only scientist to collect the species. By examining the rare plant's morphology, Pfeiffer determined that it was a species of the genus Thismia, a genus that at the time was believed to occur only in the Southern Hemisphere. No one knows how this isolated population survived in North America until historic times.