Female flowers
Manioc, as this plant is better known, deserves a whole book written on it for its gastronomic virtues. But for now, it is enough to say that this shrub is a gift to the world as it provides tapioca flour and edible starchy tubers which is a staple for many cultures around the world.
Also known as Cassava or Yuca in other places, manioc hails from south America, and one really has to visit Brazil to appreciate the extent of how culturally integrated this tuberous plant is.
After finally growing a manioc plant, I was compelled to write this post when an individual we cultivated flowered. From a plant about 1.6m tall, the first female flowers blossomed on the 3rd of May, some eight months after we planted a baton of manioc in the ground at the School for Field Studies.
These female flowers instantly give away the affiliation of the plant with the Euphorbiaceae (the family of the Spurges), especially with those complex cauliflower-like while stigmas atop the ovary.
These downward earth-facing flowers had a nice polished look, which I must say I wasn’t expecting of a cassava plant
Almost 3 weeks later, the same plant produced male flowers, again more attractive than I had expected, with its pinkish petals.
The male flowers must have a good amount of nectar as it attracted a native moth, the Asian Magpie Moth (Nyctemera baulus), to come feeding. I can’t say if this is a typical pollinator of manioc plants, but some pollen obviously got onto the legs of the moth. Unfortunately there were no other female flowers around on the other manioc plants we had.
When we took a look closer at the inside of the flowers, we found big conspicuous orange nectaries, which is presumably the source of the delectable nectar.
Although cultivated more as a tuberous crop, the foliage itself is edible. I feel also that manioc is attractive and charismatic enough to make a nice addition to a home garden. The leaves of manioc are digitately lobed and superficially resembles that of Cannabis, but those long red leaf stalks are highly distinctive.
See the iNaturalist observation entries:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/46835974
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/46704458
And that for the Asian Magpie Moth
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/46835976
Leaf Whispering in the Tropics 