In Iraq, a Medical Student Finds the First Rhynchocorys odontophylla Plant Posted to iNat! - Observation of the Week, 8/1/23

Our Observation of the Week is the first Rhynchocorys odontophylla plant posted to iNaturalist! Seen in Iraq by @aryathesage.

“My love of nature has been greatly influenced by my parents,” says Arya, a fifth year medical student at the University of Sulaymaniyah (UOS). “Both of them were and still are greatly enthusiastic about the natural world, especially my mom. Their shared interest has been passed down to me and my sister as well, however, it has become much more concentrated in me!”

Arya’s first interest in animals was dinosaurs (“I think most children go through some form of dinosaur phase, but mine has lasted for 20 years.”), and it’s expanded to both living organisms and geological phenomena like rocks, minerals, and mountains.

“After developing an interest in mountains, I started acting on that interest in the most basic form: going hiking! As luck would have it, Kurdistan, where I’m from, is a perfect place to satisfy the needs and wants of a mountaineer,” he explains. Arya soon became interested in the trees he saw, and that led him to iNaturalist.

[iNaturalist] opened a whole new door for me in a way I hadn’t realized before. Seeing all of these people here from all over the world sharing pictures of flora and fauna that was around them made me feel more aware of nature than ever before. I started paying more attention to the trees, the wild flowers, the bugs, the birds, even the moss growing on the ground. So, I did what everyone here on iNat did and started taking pictures of everything I could. 

When I shared those pictures on the site for the first time and some people helped identify them, it was a great feeling. A feeling that I had done something worthwhile rather than sitting idly on my computer all day. After a while of sharing photos I was curious to see what other people from Kurdistan had shared on iNat before me and what I saw was a bit underwhelming. Not in the way of quality, but in quantity. There were only about a thousand observations made from Iraqi Kurdistan and most of them were of insects and animals rather than plants. So from that moment I took it upon myself as some sort of a calling or a goal to share all the beautiful plants I find on my hikes with the world through this site.

Now it’s been over one year since my first observation and as I promised myself I think I’ve reached that goal by adding many new observations from Kurdistan, however, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing what I love any time soon. As long as I can go out in nature and take photos of the wildlife I will keep sharing the wonders of my homeland with the world. 

My goal was hard to fulfill at first because my dad would have trouble letting me go on nature hikes alone and for good reason. Nature hikes aren’t a walk in the park here since there are many things that could pose threats…This is why my dad said that I had to find a partner to go with and not alone. I didn’t really have anyone I could go with since the family were usually busy, friends didn’t have energy for hikes, and hiking groups wouldn’t really go at my pace. This problem was solved for me by my dear and beloved grandmother [above], who convinced my dad to let me go with the condition that I take her with me. She came with me on almost 80% of my hikes this year and kept me company behind the camera even on the longest of journeys. Even though she can’t walk for long distances, let alone hike, she wanted me to do what I enjoy and came with me to all the beautiful places I visited. So I have her to thank for my love of nature as well, because without her I wouldn’t have been able to see half the plants or the places that I have seen to date.

Last month, one of those hikes was a family trek (this one without Arya’s grandmother) to Bekodyan Pond, located high in the mountains of what will be Halgurd-Sakran National Park. 

The fact that you can find snow at the top even in July and August has made this mountain pond a top destination for local hikers, but the journey towards it is not easy and requires endurance. Me, my sister, my three cousins and my uncle started our trek to the pond early in the morning from our camp around 6 am trying to reach the pond by 12 pm. As we trekked further away from our camp and more into the valley that led to our destination, I started noticing more and more beautiful flowers that I had not seen around my hometown of Sulaymaniyah (Slemani in Kurdish).

I started lagging behind my team because I was slowing down every 20-30 meters to take photographs of the beauty all around me. I found the plant in question in one of these quick stops because the strange shape of its petals - the top one especially shaped like a duck’s head with a long beak - grabbed my attention even from afar. I had never seen something like it before and honestly didn’t know even to which family it belonged (I was thinking it might be a part of Lamiaceae [mint family] at first). Of course, after taking the photos at the time I didn’t think much more of it and resumed running after my teammates who’d left me far behind and were nowhere in sight.

Unfortunately the group didn’t reach Bekodyan Pond, but Arya says “in the end, the trip was a success for me when it comes to finding beautiful plants to photograph and quite honestly one of my most pleasant hiking experiences.”

Arya was close: Rhynchocorys odontophylla definitely belongs to the order Lamiales, which includes mints, but is currently listed as being in the family Orobanchaceae, most of which are parasitic.  It was first documented in Iraq only a few years ago, making it the third species of the genus seen in the country.

“I am not an academic botanist, as I said before my actual topic of study is medicine, but that hasn’t stopped me from having a huge interest in native species of plants,” says Arya (above, near Kani Rash waterfall).

My interest in botany is a hobby more than anything at the moment, because I really can’t afford to be more focused on it than on my future career as a doctor. What’s great about iNaturalist is that it affords people like me the opportunity to share their photographs even if they’re not familiar with the species or even the genus, because there are so many good-natured naturalists who can tell the species even from a bad photograph and can help you in the identification process. In this way I can say that I’ve made some good friends and acquaintances on this site, by asking for their opinions and receiving their generous help in the identification of my unknown or unfamiliar photographs. I can go as far as say that I’ve learned more about plants from them than I would have if I was taking a course in college, and I am forever grateful for their knowledge and the assistance they’ve given me.

(Some quotes have been lightly edited.)

- This short video follows a group hiking to Bekodyan Pond, with some nice looks at the flowers along the way.

- There are over eight thousand verifiable observations from Iraq, here are the most-faved!

- Previous parasitic plant Observations of the Week include posts from Taiwan, Jordan, and Ecuador!

Posted on August 2, 2023 12:10 AM by tiwane