A single sterile hydrangea blossom showing its fancy colours. (cultivar).
Interesting for me: the Hydrangea “flower” is really a cluster of flowers called a corymb. Each corymb usually has both sterile and fertile flowers. The dome is made up of lots of sterile flowers and just a few fertile flowers hidden within. The fertile flowers do not have petals, but the sterile flowers have developed very showy sepals (part of the outer portion of a flower known as the calyx). And this is one of those sterile blossoms. Maybe I snap tomorrow a picture of the tiny fertile flowers.
@sarasotab Thanks Robert for your comment. As far as I understand are stamen and pistil "atrophied". Maybe atrophied is not the correct word in English, and degenerated would be better? Here a picture of the fertile flower.
