Joe Kahlo
One day, Redditor Octopus Prime shared a photo of what looked like a plant, that’s flowers resemble a hummingbird. And the internet went crazy.
This confusing yet fascinating phenomenon is from the plant, the ‘green flowerbird’ or ‘regal flowerbird.’ It is completely natural and it appears to look like some sort of origami hummingbird.
This is just another example of natural beauty. The plant is a member of the legume family, the same family as chickpeas.
It is native to northern Australia and thrived among sandy dunes. It is quite amusing that Australia is not home to any hummingbirds.
Many netizens attempted to decipher why this plant is flowering hummingbird images, some thought it could be an adaptive evolutionary development. But this is not the case.
“The fact that the flower looks like a bird to humans cannot have evolved adaptively because as a signal receiver, there is nothing humans could have done to increase the fitness of individuals that evolved this signal (to look like a bird). Unless indigenous Australians in arid Australia bred or traded the plant because it looks like a bird.”
It was in fact kept around by the indigenous people, but not because of the flowers aesthetic value.
It was valued due to its medicinal usage by the Aboriginal people who used it as an eyewash and to treat infections.
This shape is actually pretty common for legume plants. And as much as many people hypothesized some meaning behind this unique shaped flower. It is nothing more than a natural phenomenon.
Instead of trying to find meaning in it, lets just enjoy the beauty of it!
