Throughout human history flowers have been the symbols of innocent beauty, of purity and simplicity. They have been viewed as the Creator’s gift to humanity, the chocolate sprinkles on the sometimes bitter cake of life.
Flowers are the essence of simple delight: uncomplicated and sweet, existing for our benefit alone. But are they? Are those sunny flower beds just a happy crowd of frilly moppets? Or are they a seething mass of sexual activity? They are, in fact, made up of self-seeking conniving floral traps to manipulate their fellow creatures — and that does not mean us.
The truth is, flowers have no ethics. They have evolved every sort of trick and strategem so that the advertising industry could use them as a text book! They lure their partners with bribes and false promises, and sometimes even murder them! Flowers can’t hang out at the local bar, so deceit and manipulation are their only option if they want to ‘get it off’.
The sex life of flowers
The sex life of plants went unnoticed by us from the time of the ancient Greeks through the sexually repressed Middle Ages. We were clearly the sexual masters of the universe. It wasn’t until the licentious 1700s that it dawned on us that plants also have sex.
In 1735 Linnaeus published his Systemma Naturae, by which all the plant kingdom could be classified by their sexual organs, a system that, with some modifications is used to this day.
So what are these sexual organs? Stamens are the male parts, made up of a filament (stalk) and topped by the anther bearing the pollen (like sperm), all out there like humans. The female parts are the stigma and style that leads to the hidden and protected ovaries that form the pistil. A flower is pollinated when a suitable pollen grain lands on the stigma and germinates. The pollen grain grows into a long tube forcing a path down the style in order to reach the ovaries and fertilise the egg. Through a process of cell division the fertilised egg forms an embryo, the miniature plant within a seed.
Linnaeus classified plants by how their sexual organs were arranged in the flower. There are the flowers in which “husbands and wives enjoy one and the same bed”, the ‘perfect’, or hermaphrodite flowers, with both female pistils and male stamens in the one flower like the lily or the rose. Plants with separate male and female flowers, such as pumpkins, sweet corn and holly he described as ‘husbands and females enjoy separate beds’. The inference being that the ‘females’ were kept women in another establishment.
The first date
So will any old pollen do the job for the average pistil? As in humans, certainly not! Every species of plant has its own uniquely sculptured pollen grain, designed to fit perfectly on the stigma of the same species of plant. Although there may be millions of pollen grains about, as hayfever sufferers will know, any pollen just landing on a stigma is first tried on for size to see if it is compatible, very like the first date for humans; if their shapes suit them, the pollen has made it through the front door, and now needs the strength to grow down to the ovary and fertilise the ovule.
Of course, most of this information has come to light since the invention of the microscope. When Linnaeus laid down his rules of classification, it was based almost entirely on the stamens (male parts). He considered their number: their length, colour, thickness and shape, much like adolescent boys everywhere.
A pollen grain, in those days, was supposed to contain a whole plant in miniature, just as human sperm was thought to contain a whole human. It wasn’t until 1827 that the Estonian biologist Karl Ernst von Baer, observed an ovule or egg cell under his microscope. Seeing was believing, and at last females were on an equal footing, no longer considered merely empty vessels. In 1906 the girls got their revenge when the youngest ever Doctor of Science at the University of Manchester, a 26-year old woman, asserted that the stigma was the most important organ in a flower. Her name was Marie Stopes, who later shocked the Edwardian world with her best seller sex manual, ‘Married Love’. She also championed birth control and women’s rights.
It takes two to tango
Whichever is the most important, males and females need to get it together to produce the next generation, so plants have evolved the most complex strategies in order to have sex. After all, plants can’t move, they need someone else to act as a go-between for each ‘Ms. Stigma’ to meet ‘Mr. Right’ pollen.
Botanic minimilists - just genitalia
The flowers of wind-pollinated plants tend to be rather dull from our point of view. As the wind has no sense of smell or colour, and doesn’t need food rewards of pollen or nectar, wind-pollinated plants confine themselves to the bare genital minimum.
However romantic Anemophily (wind love) may sound, it can be a hit or miss affair throwing your sex life to the winds. It is unless you produce massive amounts of pollen — and these plants certainly do. In urban areas in Britain the ‘pollen rain’ per annum has been measured as 3,000 grains per square centimetre. In parts of heavily forested Sweden there have been counts of up to 30,000 pollen grains per square centimetre. This is an enormous amount, but when you consider that a single hazel catkin can produce about 4 million pollen grains and a Birch catkin 5.5 million, it is no wonder pollen grains have been found in the mid-Atlantic. Corn uses 25,000 pollen grains to fertilise one corn kernel.
Sex on the wing
Flowers that use other intermediaries, however, are a different matter. They have evolved an enormous range of bribes: fast food, free parking, colour, perfume and pseudo sex to ensure the plant is sexually satisfied, even if no one else is. Insects, birds and small mammals have their tastes catered for, just so plants can ensure the next generation.
The way to most pollinators’ hearts is through their stomachs. Flowers set the table, not with a loaf of bread and a jug of wine, but with cups of sweet nectar and protein-rich pollen. They also add the option of eating in for beetles, bats and butterflies, or take-away for the busy bees.
Of course, those types who fumigate their gardens and crops with toxic chemicals are not only poisoning themselves and beneficial insects, but depriving their plants of their bit of crumpet. Take out the insects and the whole ecosystem is deprived, resulting in fretting, frustrated flowers that will never bear fruit.
Their best work is in beds
The top of the line pollinators, the most intelligent and best organised are, of course, the honeybees. Although we associate red with excitement and sex (think of the red light district), bees cannot see red at all. The busy workforce of bees are all virgin females, drugged by the Queen Bee to collect nectar and pollen for the good of the hive – no wonder they are not conscious of red.
However, bees can see ultraviolet, which we cannot, and so some flowers that look red to us contain ultraviolet, which explains why bees love red poppies. In general, bees prefer yellow and blue flowers, especially those with dots or streaks, such as Foxgloves, that point to the flower’s nectaries, just like road signs.
The Horse Chestnut has found it worth its while to surround its nectaries and sexual organs with yellow dots. When the flower has been pollinated, these dots turn red so that the bees are directed to other flowers that are in need of sexual interaction.
Choosing partners
Don’t forget our edible crops have flowers that need to be sexually satisfied as well. Wheat, like beans, peas (including soy) and tomatoes are ‘selfers’ or self-pollinated. They have closed flowers and have no need for go-betweens. This does not mean that most flowers are self- fertilising. By timing the ‘puberty’ of the stamens and pistils in the one flower, most flowers can be fertilised by flowers from other plants that are at a different stage of development. Sometimes the boys (stamens) are sexually active before the girls (pistils), or the other way around. Whichever happens first, if you live in a large community there is sure to be a sexual partner out there somewhere. This is how genetic diversity in a species is assured.
Cobaea scandens, the Cup and Saucer Vine, as well as Rue (Ruin graveolens) have a way of self- pollinating, but only as a last resort. The male stamens of both plants mature before the female stigma is receptive. If, however, the stigma remains unpollinated the stamens raise themselves in a last ditch erection to fertilise the female parts of its own flower. Some sex is better than none! However, canola, sweet corn and cotton can cross-pollinate with the same species, for sex is the engine of evolution. Canola, being a brassica, can cross with others in that close family including Broccoli, Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts which have all evolved from the same species, Brassica oleracea. Sweet Corn, which bares its genitals to the wind, will cross with any other Sweet Corn.
Such plants, when genetically modified, still stick to the same sexual habits as the non-modified variety. This is the real threat of GMO crops. The home organic gardener or farmer will not be able to save seed safely within the wind range of sweet corn or bee range for brassicas (Broccoli, Cauliflowers, Cabbage, Turnip, Radish). Plants have evolved their sexual habits over millennia, and just like us, aren’t likely to change. Do the multinationals really understand that plants have their own agenda when it comes to having sex?
So next time you are out smelling the roses, remember that flowers, just like the world, do not exist for our convenience. Every flower is after its own bit of fun.