They have been called "cohering keels" and an illustrated article about them by H. Harold Hume appeared in the Proceedings of the Florida Academy of Sciences (1: 48-57, 1936). His paper looked at Zephyranthes, Crinum and a few others. The idea is that they function like latches and allow the tepals of the closed flower to expand to full size (or nearly so) before opening, and allow the protected androecium and gynoecium to grow close to maturity, until the flower "suddenly" opens when the keels are forced to unlatch because of the irresistible force of the growing tepals. This effect can be seen in slow motion photography of flowers opening, depending on the species. This feature seems to have received little attention from taxonomists, which fact Hume remarked upon, but it is certainly an interesting mechanism. Thanks for sharing the photos! Dylan On 30 September 2013 14:11, David Pilling <pbs@pilling.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Hi, > > I took these photos of the petal tips of my amaryllis belladonna > yesterday: > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/… > donna_DP24.jpg > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/… > donna_DP23.jpg > > it is a barb device with some fuzzy stuff growing on it. > > Does anyone know what these are called or what they might do? > > > -- > David Pilling > email: david@pilling.demon.co.uk > web: http://www.davidpilling.net/ > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > -- * "People generally quarrel because they cannot argue." --G. K. Chesterton *