Foliage
Like other manroots, Marah fabaceus has stout, hairy stems with tendrils. Vines appear in late winter in response to increased rainfall, and can climb or scramble to a length of 6 meters. Its leaves typically have five lobes with individual plants showing wide variation in leaf size and lobe length.
Vines emerge from a large, hard tuberous root which can reach several meters in length and weigh in excess of 100 kilograms. Newly exposed tubers can be seen along roadcuts or eroded slopes and have a scaley, tan-colored surface. Injured or decaying tubers take on a golden or orange color.
Read more about this topic: Marah Fabaceus
Famous quotes containing the word foliage:
“Birds which are the same color as the foliage in which they nest are less likely to be disturbed by other birds who want to drop in and chat, and therefore last longer.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“In the capsule biography by which most of the people knew one another, I was understood to be an Air Force pilot whose family was wealthy and lived in the East, and I even added the detail that I had a broken marriage and drank to get over it.... I sometimes believed what I said and tried to take the cure in the very real sun of Desert D’Or with its cactus, its mountain, and the bright green foliage of its love and its money.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum?
Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)