BATTERY
Pollinating flowers is not a walk in the park. In the interest of getting their pollen onto or off of a pollinator, flowers can be quite direct, sometimes even striking their guest!e
COUSIN’S WAR
A number of plants which are closely related (technical term: in the same Genus, the classification with is the smallest division that holds multiple species) nonetheless have striking differences, and are classified as different species. While species designation is a human-created categorization, it always reflects some noteworthy differences. I’m fascinated by ‘cousin species’ that contain distinct alterations in color, structure, timing, etc. In blog entries with this tag, I highlight the difference and discuss what I have found or conjectured about how the differences reflect different approaches to pollinators/pollination. One of my favorite ‘unsolved mysteries’ is the Fairy Bells, yellow and spotted (Prosartes lanuginosa and Prosartes maculata).
***Warning: while we tend to assume that ‘everything has a purpose’, differences can arise by chance or become a focus simply because one ‘different’ individual becomes the lucky founder of an isolated group.
DECEPTION
Flowers attract pollinators with the promise of rewards… promises which are not always kept. Orchids commonly indulge in such trickery, but they’re not the only ones. This tag is applied where we’re pretty certain there’s nothing valuable proffered for insect visitors--despite allurements meant to persuade them otherwise.
HOSTING
A striking number of caterpillars can or will only dine on leaves of a single or small group of related species. The plant in this partnership is called the ‘host’. This sounds great, but in many cases, we’ve got a plant that has come up with some sort of toxic self-defense, and a caterpillar that has somehow ‘cracked the code’ to eat without dying, and even to incorporate the toxicity into its own tissues as a defense. So the ‘host’ is merely a plant whose defenses have been defeated and gets eaten anyway.
KIDNAPPING
Flowers are all about… themselves. Their laser focus is on getting pollen onto the right spot of guests or having it delivered to receptive female parts. Often, this is enhanced by forcing the visitors to ‘bide a while’. The mechanisms are ingenious and (to me) fascinating.
MOVEMENT
We often think of plants as completely immobile. While they generally can’t “get up and leave”, plants engage in a lot of purposeful movement, certainly in their flowers. Some move their male or female parts to present them at separate times to disallow (and perhaps later encourage) self-pollination.
MURDER
Make no bones about it: flowers are in it for themselves. As long as successful pollen deliveries are achieved, the eventual fate of the pollinator is… uninteresting. Occasionally, the bug version of ‘manslaughter’ takes place—a side effect of a given pollination mechanism can accidentally bring about the demise of ‘irrelevant’ insects.
PARASITE
Natural selection is an amoral judge—whatever works best, wins. Making energy from sunlight is an intricate and costly game, why not just steal someone else’s bread?
PARTNERING
We’re coming to realize that fungi play a huge, often-positive role in the lives and well-being of plants. These interactions are often fascinating. I have read that essentially all Amanitas and Milk caps engage in plant partnerships.
TIMING
A very simple way to avoid pollinating yourself even when you have bisexual flowers is to have male and female parts mature at different times, so that functionally a plant is either male or female at any particular moment.
TWO SEXES
Except in cases of great need, self-pollination is to be avoided. This is tricky in pollination, since plants are often passive participants in their own sex lives. One of many tricks that has evolved is to decrease accidental self pollination by producing only male or female flowers on a given plant.