Not Meat but Nectar. Blue Bottle Fly, Calliphora vomitoria, on Senecio (Curio) articulatus, Worsies or Hot-dog Cactus, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Since Paul V. Heath's (1950-) publication in Calyx 56 (4) (1997), p.136, our Senecio is called a Curio. The scientific article is rather hard to find and the new taxonomical designation hasn't yet caught on, so I keep to the Hortus's Senecio.
Indeed, this succulent has gone by confusingly many names. The Supplement to 'Linnaeus' at the end of the eighteenth century uses the name Cacalia carnosa; later it's Kleinia and later again the more familiar Senecio. The 'articulatus' is for the articulate stems, sectioned much as a string of sausages or hot-dogs, worsies in Afrikaans. I suppose the Latin 'carnosa' by which it was known in the times of Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) who collected it in South Africa - as the Supplement says - suggests those sausages.
Anyway, in the dry glass house of the Hortus this morning its flowers were appropriately being visited by a Blue Bottle Fly, a so-called Flesh Fly. It's seeking nectar, but will lay its eggs later in something meaty.
Not Meat but Nectar. Blue Bottle Fly, Calliphora vomitoria, on Senecio (Curio) articulatus, Worsies or Hot-dog Cactus, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Since Paul V. Heath's (1950-) publication in Calyx 56 (4) (1997), p.136, our Senecio is called a Curio. The scientific article is rather hard to find and the new taxonomical designation hasn't yet caught on, so I keep to the Hortus's Senecio.
Indeed, this succulent has gone by confusingly many names. The Supplement to 'Linnaeus' at the end of the eighteenth century uses the name Cacalia carnosa; later it's Kleinia and later again the more familiar Senecio. The 'articulatus' is for the articulate stems, sectioned much as a string of sausages or hot-dogs, worsies in Afrikaans. I suppose the Latin 'carnosa' by which it was known in the times of Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) who collected it in South Africa - as the Supplement says - suggests those sausages.
Anyway, in the dry glass house of the Hortus this morning its flowers were appropriately being visited by a Blue Bottle Fly, a so-called Flesh Fly. It's seeking nectar, but will lay its eggs later in something meaty.