Credit: iStockphoto/Rob BroekSex in nature is irresistably fascinating. José María Gómez and Francisco Perfectti of the University of Granada have used complex geometric analysis to show that insect pollinators influence the evolution of flower shape.via Science Daily

It isn’t the case that flowers have no brains of their own. With all the talk about female emancipation, a girl flower is still on a life mission to get polinated. The researchers found that insects have different preferences in flower shape.

“Large bees preferred flowers with narrow petals; small bees had a preference for wider flowers; bee flies had a preference for rounded flowers.”

Smart flowers adapt to catch their insect. Flowers with shapes preferred by pollinators tend to have higher output of nectar and pollen. If you let your imagination run wild, all kinds of questions come to mind, which is why Darwin once described the entire process of pollination and flowers an “abdominable mystery.”

A second article on this Science Daily subject also caught my eye.

Consider the pollination problem of your average sundew plant. Depending on pollination for reproduction, you want the longest possible flowerstalks. Time and time again, we know what happens to tall rapturous flowers with a lot of backbone. They become the lunch of Conservatives.

Bruce Anderson at the University of Stellenbosch clearly demonstrated that the tallest sundews got pollinated, if they escaped the gaze of the morality police.

Using identical flowers, Anderson planted some stalks at normal height. Cutting the stalks off a group of flowers, he planted them just peeping out of the soil. They were modest little flowers, waiting patiently for some good sex.

The only difference between the showgirl sundews and the pious sindews were their height. The results were emphatic, said Anderson. “The taller flowers had ten times the number of visitors than the short flowers.”

There is no doubt that the sundews grow long stalks for sex and not to keep pollinators safe, which has been the current theory, one probably created by men, I say. These plants want sex and they know how to draw attention to themselves to get it.

I wonder if flowers get shorter in stature, the closer one gets to Jerusalem. To be continued … Anne