EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

A Chinese Lantern in Patagonia

Chinese Lantern (Misodendrum punctulatum), Family Misodendraceae
on:  Antarctic Beech (Nothofagus antarcticus), Family Nothofagaceae
Torres de Paine National Park, Chile

Explanation:  Quick, can you spot the Chinese lantern in this photo?

Actually, you already have.  It is the green material that you might think are leaves in this line of trees.  I'll explain.

We are in very southern Chile, nearing Torres de Paine National Park, in southern Patagonia, way down in the so-called "Southern Cone" of South America.  Here grow forests of Antarctic beech, one of the several species of Nothofagus trees.  But the trees are being invaded, strangled in a sense, by this week's star, a hemiparasite known as Chinese lantern.

  
Chinese lantern grows as spherical clumps of high-branched foliage.  It has a sucking root called a haustorium.  The haustorium is an organ that takes minerals and water from its host tree, and converts that material into its own food ... because the Chinese lantern also has its own chlorophyll, as does the tree.  

And this is why it is called a hemi-parasite, because it too uses chlorophyll (whereas a true parasite can be achlorophyllous, meaning without chlorophyll).  

The fruits of Chinese lantern are wind-blown, which accounts for the very localized, clumped distribution of this parasitic plant that essentially comes to dominate entire beech stands. 

And I could not readily locate information on why it is called Chinese lantern ... but I suppose the way it decorates its host tree, it resembles its namesake.