Balanophora coralliformis
Balanophora coralliformis, sometimes known as coral plant, is a flowering plant in the family Balanophoraceae and is known only from Mount Mingan on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Like others in its genus, it is an obligate parasite growing on the roots of rainforest trees, but differs in that its tuber appears above ground and has an elongated, repeatedly branched, coral-like structure. It was first described in 2014 and is known from fewer than 50 plants, but has not as yet been declared endangered.
Description
Like other members of its genus, B. coralliformis is holoparasitic and contains no chlorophyll. It forms clumps up to about long above the ground, branching with cylindrical segments up to long and in diameter. There are 4, sometimes 5 yellow to straw-coloured overlapping, concave, egg-shaped leaves, arranged at about the same level around each segment of the above-ground tuber. The leaves are long and wide.The plant is dioecious, having separate pistillate and staminate plants. The flowers appear at the end of each tuber segment, arranged in racemes. The racemes of white male flowers are long, wide and contain 12 to 16 flowers and the female racemes are long, wide and contain many minute, straw-coloured flowers, mostly less than long.