semans's blog

The object is a stem ending with three glossy, green leaves with some red-brown splotches. The stem is a matte, reddish-brown colour covered in fuzzy, white hairs and extends into a vein system present throughout the leaves. The leaves have similar hair extending out from their contours, though individual hairs are thicker, sparser and have a yellow tinge. The leaves are somewhat opaque, the vein systems letting through the most light and creating a kind of scale-like pattern on each leaf. Though glossy on top, the leaves are matte underneath and paler in colour. Each leaf is shaped like an extended, rounded V, topped with a series of cloud-like nubs that finish in a point. The central leaf is symmetrical but the leaves on the sides are not. This leaf arrangement raises the possibility that these leaves make up a compound leaf, and are in fact not leaves but leaflets. The veins are yellow-green in colour. From middle leaf top to stem end the leaf is 7.7 cm long. All of the leaves are dotted with raised, red-brown pustules of various sizes, the smallest at less than 1 mm and the largest at just over 1 mm. These pustules seem to be capable of bursting as the red-brown splotches on the leaves look like liquid that has flowed and then dried up. This liquid seems to have originated from the pustules as the splotches have some kind of dried up, crater-like region where a pustule may have once stood. In addition to the pustules, there are small, flat, black marks on the leaves. The leaves have a fairly strong, distinctive smell. The leaves’ tops have a waxy feel whereas the bottom feels rougher.