New exhibit at the botanical garden I volunteer at.
The intoxicating beauty of flowering plants is a mating dance of botanical proportions. Birds do it, bees do it, and yes, all plants do it – become fruitful and multiply. But plants don’t go to social events, and they can’t swipe right, depending instead on friends in nature acting as matchmaker to provide the perfect partners for reproduction.
Some plants procreate asexually, creating identical clones. But for diversity through adaptation and variation, some plants breed sexually, sometimes on their own or with help from others (pollinators like wind, water, insects, animals, and even humans).
