The Sex Life of Flowers: a Primer on Pollination

A blossom is nothing more than a lure, designed to attract bees or other polinators to move pollen from anther to pistil.

by Cass PetersonOctober 2000from issue # 29

plant , like animals , have a sex liveliness . But unlike animate being , works ca n’t walk , swim , fly , or crawl around in search of a Paraguay tea . For procreation , most plants necessitate assistance , so they make use of , ahem , sexual devices .

Flowers , that is .

human race look up to flowering plant for their beauty , but in truth a bloom is nothing more than a lure , design to attract an intermediary to do the necessary body of work of moving pollen from anther to pistil . A flower is n’t a sex organ per se , but it carry the pertinent parts . Kind of like a silk negligee .

Some bloom attract with scent , some with colour . Most offer nectar as an lure to visitant and as a mode to check repeat visits .

retort business is particularly authoritative for industrial plant that incase many seed in a unmarried fruit — raspberries , for case , or melon vine . A poorly pollenate Bronx cheer will have many shrunken , dry drupelet . A melon vine blossom that does n’t draw enough pollinators may produce a melon that is small-scale , wonky , and not very mellifluous .

A few of the more persnickety genera have adapted the shape of their bloom to favor sure pollinator — tubular blossoms pull hummingbirds , for representative , but the nectar is often unprocurable to bee . Other plants are n’t choosy . They ’ll do line with birds and bees , and also with wasps , beetles , rodent , and even human if that ’s what it shoot to move the pollen .

One of the reason poppies make pitiful track blossom is that the blossom slicing shortly after it has been pollinate . It ’s a rare nurseryman who can baulk whiff a newly cut down efflorescence ( even though most poppy have little fragrance ) , but a nose nuzzle is all it takes to pollinate a poppy . Moral : If you require to enjoy a cutting poppy for more than a few hours , it must remain virginal . Do n’t sniff it , and do n’t shove it when you carry it indoors , either .

Many flowers have a typical bull’s - eye colour normal or a pharynx of a different shade from the outside petals , to help insects and birds discover the warhead of pollen . Okra blossoms , for object lesson , are stunning with their deep - maroon throats accenting creamy - ashen petals . They take care like neat hollyhocks — and in fact are in the Malva crime syndicate — but neither they nor their perennial - garden cousin borrow that two - tone color to impress those of us who plant them . The dark pharynx blotch is a navigation aid for insects . Even its people of color is calculated , maroon being within the visible kitchen range for bees .

pollenation in the vegetable patchVegetable industrial plant are n’t typically grown for their bloom , but as with any other plant , their bloom are engineer for efficient procreation . In fact , it ’s hard to beat the straightforward promiscuity of squash , which much herds insects from male person to female blossoms .

In the light of break of the day , a fledged squash racquets patch is spangled with gilt blossoms , all fresh and dewy . A closer look disclose that they are all male blossoms , identifiable by their uncoiled stems , and are already being explored by early - rising insects .

A few hours later , the male blossoms are spend , shattered and drooping , but the distaff blossoms — the I with midget squashes at their bases — are open . insect , laden with pollen from the virile blossoms , move to the female blossoms and voilà ! Squash happens .

Not all bloom need the physical movement of pollen from male flower to female flower . Many rough-cut vegetables , like love apple and beans , have what are called perfect flowers , with both virile and distaff contribution in the same flush . A good shaking — by the wind or by hand — is enough to achieve pollination .

Commercial agriculturist often use humblebee to cross-pollinate love apple blossoms in hothouses , where there is no idle words to rattle the plants . It is n’t that bumblebee are extraordinarily effective at gathering pollen compared with other bees ; their note value is in their size of it . A bumblebee can shake an entire arm while bring down a single bloom .

A few plants rely on wind pollination even though they have both male and female flowers . Corn , for model , must get pollen from its tassel — the manful flower — to the silk , which is the stigma of the female flush . Each chain of silk , if pollinated , will produce one sum of the future pinna .

corn whisky does its part by set up the male flower high up on the plant , up where the zephyrs play . Like other grasses , the predecessors of Indian corn evolved to rise in large populations , to increase the chances of a silk being windward of every tassel .

gardener mimic nature by found corn in mental block . If the size or shape of the garden make it impossible to establish a critical mass of corn , there is still a way to achieve pollenation . All the gardener has to do is disrobe the pollen from the tassels by helping hand and thoroughly dust every silk .

Try not to recall of it as pander .

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Plants seduce pollinators with fragrance and hue and ensure return visits with the promise of nectar.Photo/Illustration: Marc Vassallo

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