A cleistogamous flower!
I had two images I wanted to capture on this return trip. The first was a good photograph of the cleistogamous
flowers of Utricularia geminiscapa. And here it is!
I took time to study many cleistogamous inflorescences at his pond, and eventually
could assign a chronology to them, classifying them
from young to old. The immature inflorescences were cream colored and smooth.
As the flowers aged, the seeds enlarged. At maturity, the capsules were very bumpy (even more so than
the one in this photograph) and the seeds became visible through the partially transparent capsule walls.
These plants were free-floating, and I could not determine if the cleistogamous flowers were normally held erect (as in
this specimen) or dangling downwards (as commonly portrayed, for example in Taylor's monograph on the genus).
