Pyrola minor

Small Wintergreen ( Pyrola minor)

The Small Wintergreen ( Pyrola minor) is a petite plant from the subfamily of wintergreen and spruce asparagus plants ( Monotropoideae ) in the family Ericaceae ( Ericaceae ).

Features

These are perennial herbaceous plants. The Small wintergreen has arranged in rosettes, roundish - oval, leathery rough leaves that remain green even in winter, which has led to the naming of the Winter Green. Their stems are shorter than the length of the laminae. The 10 to 25 centimeters long stalk ( stem axis ) is overrun green or reddish.

The white to pink, spherical flower of the little winter greens appear in central Europe from June to July. It involves nectar loose bell shaped flowers which grow in allseitswendigen, erect racemes. The three to five millimeters long petals are not fused. The crown of the pressed sepals are triangular. The straight, non- thickened pen is shorter than the corolla of this type. In Pyrola minor, it often comes to self-pollination, because the mealy pollen ( anthers ) trickles out of the pores of the stamens to the stigma deeper. This is slimy and attracts mainly flies and beetles.

The tiny seeds of the small winter greens are in capsules. These have five subjects, which burst on longitudinal columns. The seeds have an inflated testa - is balloonists. The resulting from the seed seedling has no cotyledons; germination can only succeed with the help of root fungi ( see below). As with other nutrition specialists seed weight with 0.004 mg is very low. In addition, a vegetative propagation by root suckers will take place.

Occurrence

The Small wintergreen can be found on base-rich, humus-rich soils, mainly in the understory of nutrient-poor deciduous forests and coniferous forests, and birch bogs or semi-natural pine forests. It grows from the plains to the mountains and has a circumpolar distribution. In northern Germany it has benefited over long phases of the expansion of pine monocultures in the 20th century.

Root fungus

The roots of Pyrola minor, as the other crops and wintergreen, covered tightly with hyphae of fungi. These fungal hyphae weave around the cortical cells of the plant, penetrate into these and they are digested. This represents an intermediate form between endothropher and ektotropher mycorrhizal Represents the Small wintergreen supplied so in addition to water, minerals and proteins, and provides for, inter alia, the fungus carbohydrates.