Thurber's stemsucker facts for kids

Pilostyles thurberi, also known as Thurber's stemsucker, is a very small flowering plant. It's a bit like a secret agent in the plant world! This tiny plant lives in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. You can find it growing in deserts and woodlands. It has been seen in places like Arizona, Texas, and Mexico.

What is Thurber's Stemsucker?

Thurber's stemsucker is a special kind of plant called a parasitic plant. This means it lives off another plant, called its "host." It's super tiny, only a few millimeters long! It hides inside the stems of its host plants. These hosts are usually legume shrubs, especially a type called Psorothamnus, like Emory's indigo bush.

How Does it Live?

Unlike most plants, Thurber's stemsucker doesn't have roots, leaves, or even chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is what makes most plants green and helps them make their own food using sunlight. Since Thurber's stemsucker doesn't have these, it gets all its water and food from its host plant. It's like a tiny, hidden straw!

Life Cycle and Reproduction

This amazing plant spends most of its life completely hidden inside its host's stem. You wouldn't even know it's there!

Blooming Time

When it's ready to bloom, tiny flowers push through the surface of the host plant's stem. These flowers are usually brown or maroon and are very small, less than 2 millimeters across. They look like little specks on the stem.

Thurber's stemsucker is a dioecious plant. This means that some plants are male and produce male flowers, while others are female and produce female flowers. Each plant only makes one type of flower.

The flowers usually appear in January, but sometimes they can bloom as early as November. After the female flower is pollinated, it swells a little. Inside, a fruit capsule develops. Each tiny fruit can hold more than 100 very small seeds.