Something incredible met me one morning

Last weekend I tried exploring some areas in the vicinity not used for agriculture for quite sometime. I found a lot of interesting things for photography, grasses, critters, patterns, colors, etc. The sun is just rising so i got enthralled. I also saw some wild guavas and helped myself. Getting fruits from the wild, newly washed by rain and directly putting them into your mouth gives a feeling of excitement, raw and  natural. This experience can be had only in the provinces.

Weeds also grow freely, colonizing species are abundant. There are also shrubs already bearing fruits for the birds and for the proliferation of species. Among the unusually exciting plant that particularly caught my attention is this climbing legume. I call this a legume because it exhibits many morphological characteristics of this type. I just am not sure if this is a colonizer too. 

The lush growth above seemingly conquering the rest is very promising.  It climbed among the rest competing for sunshine. 

Leaf transition from emergence to maturity is very dramatic. It started reddish brown, progressing to maturity by diminishing the reddish pigments to become green. You are quite well aware that young leaves have this color as protection from ultraviolet rays. These reddish or purplish pigments gradually lost to unmask the chlorophyll for photosynthesis.

 Please give attention to the almost overlapping leaflets, which somehow droop to avoid direct rays of the sun.

The midribs and veins turn green ahead than the flat leaf lamina. Position in space of the individual leaflets also become more level and more exposed to the sun's rays. 

 As the leaves become greener, the angular position in relation to the sun becomes more pronounced. This time they get more upright, or the tips point to an angle. And the color red or brown just slightly discernible. 

 A very dramatic effect made by the leaflet angles to capture more sun's rays produced the seemingly different colors. The above and bottom photo should have been nice representatives to Donna's Garden Walk Garden Talk Illumination meme. The top side facing the sun is dark green while the underside is lighter. 

And i love this pattern and texture the most.

Upon seeing these structures at the bottom of the midribs, i thought it might be a colonizing species! Or it might probably be very vulnerable or delicious to have much of those protection.  The thorns make it more competitive in terms of space and predators. Not many caterpillars can attempt climbing those thorny stems and midribs. Now, what is in it making it very active in protection!

This is the top portion of the plant in its elegant competitive stature, with all its beautiful leaves in color transition. I checked for some leaves which might have succumbed to predation, but i did not see any. 


I don't know this plant and attempts to look for it in the web proved futile. Even the vernacular term "kabit-kabag" is not in  world-wide-web. Perhaps, even our biodiversity authorities are not familiar with it or not encountered it. I hope it is not yet endangered as i learned of its medicinal use from my mother. 


I think it is a beautiful plant, what about you? 


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