EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Red-hot Poker at Ten Thousand Feet

Red-hot Poker (Kniphofia thomsonii), Family Asphodelaceae [or Xanthorrhoeaceae]
Mount Kenya National Reserve, Kenya, Africa

Explanation:  No, it's not a card game on an airplane ... but this is "red-hot poker" ... and we are indeed at an elevation of ten thousand feet (3,048 m).

We are on the side of Mount Kenya ... more properly, within Mount Kenya National Reserve.  Growing wild in this high-elevation tropical forest is this beautiful flowering perennial.

Red-hot pokers -- also called alpine pokers -- are native to only in a few places in eastern Africa, notably Mt. Kenya (in Kenya) and Mt. Kilamanjaro (in Tanzania) ... usually in high-elevation moist sites.  

This plant has been placed in the botanic family Asphodelaceae ... and Xanthorrhoeaceae ... and even Liliaceae.  The first of these seems to be the currently accepted taxonomy.

It is cultivated and sold for its beautiful inflorescence.  

Look at the shape of the flowers, though.  Who do you think might pollinate such a long, tubular corolla?  While there are no hummingbirds in Africa, the next best bet might be one of the alpine species of sunbirds, the Old World equivalent (anatomically and functionally) of hummingbirds.  

Information:
     Brown, M., C.T. Downs, and S.D. Johnson.  2010.  Pollination of the red-hot poker Kniphofia laxiflora (Asphodelaceae) by sunbirds.  South African Journal of Botany 76(3):460-464.