Day 155: New & Blue

Let me introduce you to a mystery flower I discovered in July.

This plant goes by the name Venus’s looking glass. I bet you could never guess how this unprepossessing plant got such an evocative name. There’s nothing mirrorlike about it. The individual flowers, though they are pretty little five-pointed stars, are hardly the swoonworthy blossoms you’d expect to see on a plant whose name references the Roman goddess of love. The plant also has cleistogamous (small, closed, self-pollinating) flowers on the lower part of the stem. They are neither noticeable nor sexy.

So how did the plant get its name? It’s sort of a case of mistaken identity. This plant is similar in appearance to an Old World plant that goes by the same common name. That plant (Legousia speculum) either has seeds so shiny that they look like mirrors, or it has a long calyx that resembles a mirror handle, or both. The first origin story is what I found on several wildflower websites, and the second one is from Britannica.com. In any event, the name doesn’t fit this New World plant very well, which is disappointing. But, looking on the bright side, at least the name is memorable, so we are unlikely to forget it.