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Fire pink (Silene virginica) - anther smut

After shooting the fire pink (Silene virginica) flower sequence (below), I later photographed additional fire pink flowers in a neighboring Nature Preserve. The two pictures above were cropped to highlight the differences between the plants from the field (left) and the time-lapse project (right). I realized that the anthers of two plants looked different. Anthers are almost universally yellowish in color because of the pollen so the brown ones caught my attention. The flowers with the brownish anthers have an anther smut. An anther smut is caused by a parasitic fungi (Microbotryum violaceum). This fungi is especially creative and replaces pollen in the anthers with fungal spores (brown dusty stuff in pictures). The fungi affect a number of related plant species and in some cases cause female flowers to take the appearance of male flowers. Carl Linnaeus, a famous botanist, mistook a specimen of Silene with anther smut as a new species.

This sequence was taken using a Nikon Coolpix 5400 controlled by a Digisnap 2000. The photo interval was 3 minutes.