I was waiting for one of the mustards in the garden to go to seed to show a silique shape.
Instead, I found this silique pod on a bleeding heart instead – does this count as silique or is it a silique shaped pod?
Fun exercise! Doing it with live plants was challenging so I opted for photos. It’s tricky to find everything at the same time!
Great job Oona,
you got this right on. The siliques of bleeding heart are actually capsules, the Papaveraceae lack the unique replum where the seeds are attached in the Brassicaceae, which is characteristic of siliques and silicles. The fruit of the bleeding heart looks very similar to a silique or even a legume, but once you section the fruit of the bleeding heart lengthwise and compare it to a fruit from the cabbage family you will see that the bleeding heart lacks of the replum. See below for the details from Arabidopsis kamschatica, which I dissected in the Brassicaceae dissection video. Well done!
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