#noxtheox

well, there are actually multiple families basal to all flowering plants; they’re referred to as being ‘ANITA grade’ or ‘ANA grade’, standing for the orders (and i’m gonna link their wikipedia pages here for Strange Plant Enjoyment) Amborellales, Nymphaeales, and Austrobaileyales. the ‘ANITA’ acronym refers to the first three plus the (supposed) order Illiciales and the family Trimeniaceae; their positioning in this is a bit spicy and contested as i take it, though, so i should note that the first three are the major ones, with most of the plants we call ‘lily pads’ resting in the Nymphaeales. 

BUT. fun fact that got me a bit riled up when i first learned about it last month: ‘lily pads’ as a concept have apparently evolved a couple times in flowering plants, so the order Nymphaeales (containing the traditional lily pad family Nymphaeaceae as well as a couple other non-lily pad aquatic plant families) is a basal group, but Nelumbonaceae-- the family that consists of the two species of sacred lotus that are out there-- is not (instead it belongs to the order Proteales; this was only figured out in the past couple decades with the innovation of molecular research). 

anyway. that aside, yeah, these guys are pretty prehistoric. like idk why i’m so impressed with how innovative ‘hm....leaf float’ as an idea ended up being, but i am; that being said, like, the flowers on these are one of those plant things where upon further inspection it’s like.......oh man this is definitely a dinosaur plant. like look at this thing

you may be wondering why she is like this. the answer is that she has specially evolved to heat up and open/close in a ploy to trap beetles overnight for Sex Purposes:

past me: i love cowboys