Gunnera perpensa
Observation - Gunnera perpensa - Southern Africa. Description: Seasonal, well-vegetated stream in narrow conservation corridor. Stream banks stabilized - no active erosion taking place.
Seasonal, well-vegetated stream in narrow conservation corridor. Stream banks stabilized - no active erosion taking place.
From PlantzAfrica website (http://pza.sanbi.org/gunnera-perpensa) - The genus Gunnera has numerous unique characteristics, some of which indicate that these plants have been around for the last 95 million years and belong to one of the oldest angiosperm families as well as being among the largest herbs on earth... The most unique oddity is that it is the only genus of flowering plants that has a symbiotic relationship with a nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Also, it is the only group of land plants that host the cyanobacteria in intercellular spaces, in other words the cyanobacteria live in the spaces between the cells. Other angiosperms, for instance many of the plants in the pea family, have nitrogen-fixing bacteria that occur within specialized cells, not outside the cell wall.