The name rhatany comes from the Peruvian Quechua language and means something like “plant that crawls over the ground” – an apt description of its growth pattern. The many-branched, wide-spreading rootstock is reddish-brown in colour. The flowers give way to long, prickly fruits that are spread by means of their burr-like hairs which attach themselves to the fur of passing animals. Bees of the genus Centris are specialised in the gathering of this oil, which they collect as food for their young and in doing so pollinate the flowers. Instead they produce an odourless oil in special glands called elaiophores. The unusual thing about the flowers is that they do not produce nectar to attract insects. These petals frame three striking-looking stamens. Its flowers, which grow from the leaf axils, have four petals which are red on the inside and have grey hairs on the outside. Rhatany branches bear yellowish-white, downy, pointed, oblong-ovate leaves about one centimetre in length. This is called hemiparasitism, because rhatany carries out some photosynthesis and is only partly dependent on the host plant. It is not particularly selective, but uses diverse plant species as host. In order to survive in this inhospitable landscape rhatany draws water and nutrients from other plants. Its branches are covered in little hairs and are procumbent rather than erect, growing outwards along the ground. In its native habitat high in the Andes it grows on barren sandy slopes, reaching a height of up to one metre.
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