Wonderful Flying Petals

LOOKS MORE LIKE A LITTLE FISH TO ME, BUT ANYWAY...

As their Latin designation, Pseudopapilionis mongoliense, suggests, these trees are native to the plains of northeast Asia, where relative aridity prevails the year round. Growing to a height in excess of 20 feet, they bear small, yellow flowers on their topmost branches in summer. Each flower bears a specially adapted, stiff pair of petals which jut out from the corolla like a pair of insect wings open for flight, which in fact they resemble in texture. Once the seeds are mature, the flowers fall off the branch, and aided by thermal updrafts, they fly by means of these wing-like petals, which flutter rapidly in the breeze and prolong their flight to a truly remarkable extent. Riding stray currents of air, the flowers follow erratic courses with numerous abrupt turns, dips and climbs, leading observers to compare their movements to those of butterflies.

Presumably this unusual mechanism of propagation evolved in order to spread the progeny far from the parent plant, thus avoiding competition in the dry and nutrient-poor environment in which the tree grows. The longest continuously-observed flight by one of these flowers lasted more than 45 minutes and took the flower nearly 2 miles from the tree.