by Jason Hernandez

Created on: January 11, 2010

Nature is like the human world: sex is a powerful drive.  Every flower, no matter how simple or elaborate, has one purpose: reproduction.  Unlike spore-bearing plants (mosses, ferns), flowering plants must recombine their genes and produce offspring different from the parents.  For most plants, a simple flower will do: just show some bright colors to get the attention of a passing bee or hummingbird, and offer some kind of reward in return.  Why then are there some very complex flowers?

For one thing, producing nectar costs the plant energy.  If it can get away with something "cheaper," it can save more energy for other functions.  So some plants try a different approach: they go into the porn business.  Bee orchids produce a flower that looks and smells like a sexually receptive female bee - even down to the detail of appendages that look like her genitalia.  Lusty male bees come in and try to mate, and in so doing, pick up pollen.  But of course - like those strip clubs where men pay to look but may not touch - it is just a tease.  The male bee fails to achieve what he seeks.  But, having learned nothing from the experience, he is lured in just the same by the next bee orchid he sees, depositing the pollen and again being frustrated in the end.  The plant makes a handy "profit" from sexual titillation.

Other orchids help the male bee hook up with an actual female - by producing a line of fragrances.  Male euglossine bees need just the right blend of fragrances to allure females.  They collect fragrances from the orchids, blending them, and applying them to their bodies.  Meanwhile, the orchid also deposits pollen on the oh-so-debonair bee, which carries it the next orchid as he formulates his perfect cologne.

Other plants exploit animal sexuality in other ways: they run nightclubs.  Certain plants of the arum family have their flowers enclosed in a petal-like leaf called a spathe.  The flowers produce heat and give off a scent, attracting beetles.  The beetles come in the evening intoxicated by the scent, many of them, both male and female, gathering inside a single blossom.  The spathe closes up like a door, and the beetles stay the night. male and female beetles hooking up, and in so doing, crawling over the receptive flowers.  Many of them will have picked up pollen in another "club" the night before, and now deposit it.  By dawn they are exhausted from their night of debauchery, and sleep it off.  As evening approaches, the beetles wake up and crawl out, in so doing, picking up another load of pollen.  Within a few hours, they will be at it again, gathering in another "club" to do it all over again.

Sex is as important to a plant as for any other living thing.  The drive to continue the bloodline will not be repressed.  So why not exploit it?  Some plants have learned to do this, and made it a successful way of life. 

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