Nature IS Amazing; Trees that "Spit" and Flowers Wave

May 10, 2008 / by anacoana

In the desert behind and in front of this place there are Desert Willows trees, they have beautiful mini look-a-like Orchards when in bloom. Before they bloom they need to  attract pollinating insects so they SPIT! Yes that's what I wrote, they send out this tini rain-drop, or spit. I get it as I walk to the post box. Amazing!

Ana

Now check this out!!

Flowers "wave" at insects to get their attention, scientists have discovered.

By Matt Walker
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7388689.stm

The finding helps explain why many flowers waft in the breeze, and reveals a hitherto unknown trick used to attract pollinators.

Scientists made the discovery while studying common wildflowers known as sea campion on the Welsh coast.

Mobile flowers are visited more often by insects and also produce more seeds, they report in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Moving flowers also attract a wider variety of insect species than more static blooms.

For years, biologists have known that flowers use striking colours, fragrances, elaborately shaped petals and nectar to attract pollinating insects such as bees and flies.

Yet no-one had ever seriously considered whether wafting in the wind acted as a similar signal.

Beachside inspiration

"I was lying on the beach watching flowers wave in the wind at my daughter's birthday party, and I wondered why they have stalks and risked getting damaged in such an exposed habitat," recounted John Warren from the University of Aberystwyth.

Only flowers that wobble the right amount are successful in setting seeds
John Warren

So he looked at what research had previously been done, and found very few answers.

"The only reference I found to motion in attracting pollinators says it's unlikely to be important, because insects are not good at detecting movement; which is clearly rubbish."

To find out more, Dr Warren and colleague Penri James experimented with sea campion (Silene maritima) growing on an exposed coast within a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Cardigan Bay in west Wales.

They observed 300 specially grown flowers of varying stem lengths, recording how much each flower moved in the wind, how often it was visited by insects and for how long, and how many seeds it went on to produce.

Scientists investigate how sea campion attracts insects

Their experiments reveal that flowers mounted on long, thin stalks move around more in the wind.

This acts as a powerful signal to passing pollinators, allowing the plant to attract more insects than less mobile flowers growing atop short, thick stems.

"We found wavy flowers are more visible to insects, and thus attract more pollinators and set more seeds," said John Warren.

But flowers ultimately face an evolutionary trade-off, he believes.

"Short, fat-stalked flowers don't wobble enough and are less attractive to pollinators; yet very wobbly flowers are just too wobbly for the insects to handle, as the insects cannot land on them.

"Only flowers that wobble the right amount are successful in setting seeds."

4 comments on Nature IS Amazing; Trees that "Spit" and Flowers Wave

  • donnamg said 1 months ago

    I really enjoyed this.  I love flowers, so I guess maybe that is why I liked the post so much.  The waving flowers really are beautiful to watch and now I know it's not JUST because the air moves them.

  • donnamg said 1 months ago

    Oh, ana...about the spitting flowers... be nice to them, don't spit back!  They're not trying to be fresh...actually, they're trying to be very friendly.

  • anacoana said 1 months ago

    LOL...I love it, it is a nice greating. in some countries it means I love you...just joking about that last part..

    thanks for the comment

  • Peter Kevan said 4 weeks ago
    In a recent paper by Warren (J. Evolutionary Biology, 2008) the effect of floral motion in pollination success from visitation rates through to fruit and seed set was elegantly demonstrated, I suspect for the first time.   It is worth noting though, that earlier papers had made serious consideration of floral motion in pollination.  Some of the earliest considerations were by Wolf from 1933 to 1937 (3 papers). S. Vogel (1954) in his mongraph on aspects of pollination of the South African flora suggests motion in small flowers as a pollinator attractant. The review by Dafni et al. (Biological Reviews 72: 239-282) draws attention to one of Wolf's papers, and to my own considerations of the inter-relationships between floral stems, floral sizes, motion, and attractiveness in the Arctic flora.  That insects are highly sensitive to motion has been well known for as long as people have studied insect vision, and a paper by Lehrer & Srinivasan discusses this with experimental data in respect to honeybees.  More recently, studies on moving objects have been made with hawkmoths and with hummingbirds.   Other aspects of floral motion and pollination apply to diaheliotropism, but that is rather a different aspec of the issue.   Cheers,  Peter  

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