Tag: flowers

Heres a shocker , especially for prudes — PLANTS HAVE SEX!

That’s right, just like all animals, a plant’s main purpose is to reproduce and they have a complex reproductive system to achieve that goal. If you admire flowers in full bloom (and who doesn’t), you are a voyeur checking out their genitalia, (botanically called gametes.) Nothing conveys love, lust and romance more than a bouquet of flowers with their voluptuous gametes for our viewing pleasure.

Males have stamens, complete with anthers and filaments. These produce pollen, the basis for fertilization. Females have a carpel with stigmas, styles and ovaries. These organs will eventually produce a fruit and seed to make more babies.

This is the birds-and-the-bees of plant sex, but there are more juicy details that involve said birds and bees. It often takes a threesome to fully get it on. Unlike animals, plants are immobile and have evolved to allow insects and other creatures (as well as wind) to transport pollen. These pollinators are also turned on and attracted to these beautiful colourful blooms, their scent and nectars. They will go from plant to plant doing the (not so) dirty work, and therefore conceiving more offspring in the process. Many animals are inadvertently involved in dispersing those seeds and their inherent genetic diversity.

Oddities are just as common as in the human world. Issues with sexual orientation and gender identity exist. Some plants are monoecious, meaning that both male and female systems appear on the plant. Stressed plants can have a sex change and become hermaphoditic – a last ditch effort to reproduce itself. Females that turn into males and fertilize themselves will produce all female seeds (- inspiration for women who want to do away with men and take over the world.) Pseudogamy is a term in which plants require pollination but does not involve male inheritance – kind of like female same-sex couples choosing to have children.

Stressed plants will often produce an abundance of blooms and fruit as a survival mechanism. This knowledge is used by orchardists to increase yields by heavy pruning, trimming roots and starving them of moisture and nitrogen at certain times. Some seeds need to be ingested and excreted by animals before they will viably sprout. Some plants are sadistic carnivores that eat insects, such as the venus fly trap.

Just as with pubescent teenagers and menopausal women, hormones are involved. There are 5 different hormones that affect plants growth. A particular hormone gibberellins, necessary for seed germination, can also, in high doses, force plants into changing sex. Also, if plant fertilization is suppressed by removing the male specimens, the horny females will desperately excrete more resins and nectars to get the pollen to stick. This technique is used in cannabis cultivation to produce the potent sinsemilla, translated from spanish to plant without seeds.

Light intensity and cycles also play a major role. Plants intuitively know when to flower by the photoperiod and spectrum of light. Horticulturists can trick plants into flowering by adjusting these cycles as well as their nutrient regimes. Too much nitrogen and the plant may not flower at all. Adding phosphorous will encourage it it bloom. Potassium will help the seeds to ripen. Once an annual plant is fertilized and goes to seed, its job is done and it will die. The cycle continues through its seeds.

Some plants are asexual and reproduce via cuttings, grafting or root division. This is often done by horticulturists to make clones of its parent. Since the beginning of agriculture, humans have cross-bred plants to produce better and better hybrids to suit our needs. Mutations have been selected and propagated to give us the millions of specimens we enjoy today. We created the sexual revolution of plants through millennia.

This is the time of year when gardeners are busy searching catalogs and surfing online for plants and seeds. I call that plant porn — magnificent specimens in seductive and photoshopped poses; erotic descriptions of their habits, wants and needs. They make it easy to pull out the credit card. After all, it’s the golden rule of marketing — sex sells.