EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

A Season of Striking Change

Amancay blooms (Alstroemeria aurea), Family Alstroemeriaceae
Andes Mountains, Argentina

Explanation:  Wow, what a difference a few weeks makes, in the appearance of this forest!

We are in the mid-elevation zone of the Andes Mountains just west of Bariloche, Argentina.  It is January -- mid-summer here -- and this forest is dominated by a species of tree called lenga (Nothofagus pumilio), one of the southern beeches.  

But it is what is on the forest floor that is most visually striking.  The orange carpet is the native Peruvian lily or amancay, also called Inca lily, which has covered the ground with this amazing show.
  

The flowers consist of six tepals.

The term "tepal" is used when petals and sepals appear the same.  

In this case, they take on the same orange color ... but in an previous EPOW episode, we discovered how those brown markings and other invisible colors appear in ultraviolet light ... for some tricky purposes of attracting insect pollinators.

On the top of this page, in the main photo on the right, however, is the same forest area just a few weeks later ... when the flowers have faded into more unicolored seed pods.  Peruvian lilies turn to seed by late February to early March.  
 

  Seed pods, getting ready to split open to distribute the next generation.

The seeds are round and hard.

Acknowledgment:  My thanks to Canadian botanist Andy MacKinnon for use of his photo of the forest in bloom, and for hosting me on my visit to Argentina during his family explorations of the Southern Hemisphere.