Part I: Pollination

• Flowers → four products to attract pollinators: nectar (sweet liquid), pollen (high protein— all amino acids, other lipids and nutrients required for bees), floral oils, edible body of some fruits
• Aroma, appearance, texture shaped by natural selection to attract pollinators
  • Plants pollinated mainly by birds → not as much scent bc birds don’t smell! (Hibiscus, etc.)
  • Buttercups = really shiny, bees attracted to the sheen
  • Bees can distinguish flowers solely by micro-texture
  • Plants also signal to bees via electrostatic charges (+ bee, - flower)— marks left by bees can signal to other bees that a certain flowers have been visited, or flowers may “guide” bee to pollen/nectar
  • Bees don’t see red, but do see UV
• Angiosperms = flowering plants, evolved from gymnosperms (no flowers or encased seeds— pine trees, gingkos)
  • Early angiosperms = water lilies, magnolias — actually heated up their flowers to attract pollinators (Elephant ear still does this!)
  • 115-130 million year evolution — vast diversity/versatility of forms, double fertilization method, co-evolution with pollinators → behind their success
• Early pollinators (beetles, bees, flies) → around long before flowers
  • Bees → collect pollen in pellets that stick to their legs for food; collect resin & bring back to hive as anti-fungal, repair material, etc.
• Case studies of flowers/their pollinators
  • Bucket orchids— fill basins with liquid; bees fall in and struggle in the liquid, where it gets pollen precisely placed on it, then can work its way free in hours!
  • Actually a much larger array of moths than butterflies (10k vs 700 in the US); proportional affect on pollination
  • Yucca moths → one of few cases of “deliberate” pollination of yucca blossoms— forms pollen balls, deposits
  • Bees get pollen all over them, then collect & use most of it— whatever is left, that they can’t reach or where they “forget to look,” goes on to pollinate
  • Many flowers “hide” their pollen from bad pollinators— tomato plants do this; = “salt-shaker” flowers. Can be pollinated by buzz pollination: bees buzz at specific frequency (300-400 Hz), which releases pollen grains
  • To reduce reliance on on single honeybee species, more interest in other species (not honey-makers) that
  • Along with insects, pollinators = birds (hummingbirds and the like), bats, rodents, lizards, humans (date palms pollinated by hand!)
  • Humans actually have a history of pollinating many species— esp grains, and today many apples (clones must be matched specifically)

Part 2: Growing, Breeding, & Selling

• History of growing plants for the flowers themselves (aesthetics) rather than for food
  • Oldest gardens = Egyptian, Chinese
  • Western gardens most influenced by Greek, Roman (many myths about flowers, agriculture)
  • Aztecs → color-coordinated, beautiful gardens (zinnias, marigolds, dahlias, etc.)
  • Floating gardens made by Aztecs, still existing— layers of rafts with soil
  • Persian/Islamic gardens: fruit trees & roses, jasmines, tulips, etc. → stimulated gardening across W Asia
  • Chinese gardens influenced Japanese → started only in 6th; by 11th c influenced by Chinese landscape paintings (just as European gardens began to be influenced by European landscapes)
• Gardening in more modern times
  • 17th c Holland → most expensive tulips ever! Not as bad anymore...
  • Today, some orchids are most expensive blooms: $262k for one; some native ones illegally transported, $5-10k per plant
• Cut flowers— “vase life” is important quality
  • Ethylene release → hastens death; flowers stored in v climate controlled environments to minimize this → roses can be cut in December to be sold in Feb!
  • Some plants being genetically engineered for ethylene resistance → keep flowers much longer
  • “Gene blasting” → DNA on gold particles shot into egg cells
  • More common/cheaper = mutagenesis
  • New technique to save hybrid plant embryos that wouldn’t survive— culture in flask
  • Attempts to make new colored flowers (black pansies, blue roses) by hybrid breeding, genetic engineering (the latter by genetic eng and RNAi!!!)
• Modified flowers often lack scent, bc fragrance molecules usually depend on many biochemical pathways → easily disrupted
• Today, most cut flowers sold in the US grown in Colombia (because of one guy’s term paper talking about good conditions, lead to startup, and took off from there)
  • Industry promoted by US govt to create decent jobs not in drug cartels
  • Still, harsh & tedious work w exposure to chemicals, pesticides, etc.
  • Flowers flown on cargo planes to the US... most to Miami, then distributed by truck
  • Each shipment inspected for insects/fungi and entire thing can be rejected for one flaw, but not tested at all for pesticides
• Bedded flowers (actual plants) mostly grown in US nurseries; sold early and in “advance bloom” to appease people’s wishes and need for flowers, much before naturally would be blooming
• Biggest flower auctions = Dutch; in a building with biggest footprint in the world (!?)

Part 3: Food, Flavors, & Sex

• Popular edible flowers = rose, pansy, chamomile, mint, dill, squash blossoms
• Saffron → worth its weight in gold; only source is the strands per flower of the crocus, which only lasts one day; only several flowers bloom per plant → very low yield
• Honey → gets flavor from nectar being close to petals; most are heated/pasteurized but single flower & raw honeys are most flavorful!
  • Mayan honey (from MX)
• Pollen = very nutritious, contains all amino acids
• Fragrances: flowers = “chemists” of nature, huge diversity of scent molecules to attract pollinators
  • Can do “smellings” with flowers in a jar like coffee or wine tastings!
  • Ancient Egypt → central of fragrances and perfumes in ancient world, used v fancy containers— popular scents = blue water lily
  • Most popular flowers used in perfumes grown far from native origins (ylangylang, rose)
  • Takes thousands of pounds of rose flowers to make 2 lb rose absolutes (sp?), costs ~$2k, flowers only harvested in the morning when most fragrant
  • Perfumes → three notes, like a chord; top (head) note, middle (heart) note, base note
    • Reveal themselves from lightest to heaviest MW; head notes 5-10 min after application to base notes 1 hour + (to a day!), base notes mixing with middle notes to form bulk of perfume
    • Ex. Top notes = citruses; middle notes = rose, lavender; base notes = vanilla, musk
    • Creation of synthetic fragrances → leveled playing field for perfume companies, and helps protect endangered species like musk deer (?)

Part 4: Flowers in Literature, Art, & Myth

• Floral references in the Bible actually pretty rare
• Origin of Western poetry about flowers = Greek: anthology = group of flowers
• Did Shakespeare ever see the flower species he writes about?
• Species that are written about in English poetry change over time, except for roses— ephemeral
• Asian tradition: extensive tradition of poetry/literature about flowers, but focus on themes of symbolic beauty, landscapes, love rather than ephemeral love/lust as in the West
  • Ancient China → lyrical poems, about rural life, lots of symbols
  • Japan → short poems, often syllable counts like haiku (usually focused on wit/rhetoric), waka
• Many songs written about/including flowers...
• Depictions of flowers in art
  • No record of cave paintings with flowers
  • Oldest examples are from Ancient Egypt
  • Long tradition of floral images in Chinese and Japanese art; appeared in European art a little later (initially associated with death and pagan cultures)
  • Dutch hyperrealist still-lifes
  • Post Raphaelites → so many paintings of young girls with flowers!
  • Then 1890s: Manet, Monet → moving away from realistic still life style; Monet painted flowers less for the flowers themselves than for the color & artistic exploration
  • Many photographers— Ansel Adams, Maplethorpe, Robert Rice, J. Scott Peck, etc. (just a random selection of those mentioned!)
  • More recently artists “photographing” using flatbed scanners
• Many coins and paper bills in currencies around the world include flowers
• Flowers on stamps
• Flower arranging
  • Tons of bouquet offerings by ancient Egyptians to pharaohs
  • Japanese art form ikebana (sp?)— four major styles
• Illuminated manuscripts in Europe → floral illustrations in marginalia, on letters (helped illiterate readers follow story by symbolism)
• Flowers in rugs (Persian, Indian, Chinese)
• Flowers in ceramics: earliest examples = tulip motif found on Minoan ceramics, then Chinese, Ottoman
• Newer forms of flower art:
  • Scanning and 3D printing flowers, including molds for lost wax casting of bronze sculptures
  • Glass art
    • Most famous = Ware collection in Boston? Blashkas?
    • Also Venetian style, millefiore (derived from “thousand flowers”, made with lots of very thin layers)

Part 5: Flowers in the Service of Science & Medicine

• Orchids → important subject of study for Darwin — all weird shapes derived from standard flower parts!
  • Cross- vs self-pollination: cross-pollination → more seeds, fitter next generation (crazy idea at the time when livestock often inbred)
    • Plants with flowers that did not favor self-pollination (ex. one flower doesn’t have both sex organs) = favored by natural selection
• Wind pollinated plants
  • Jojoba— native to Sonoran desert, produce oil identical to sperm whale oil so great for shampoo! Flower design has aerodynamics to trap airflow in spirals around female flowers for up to minutes, increasing chance of pollen capture!
• Bee vision
  • We see at much higher resolution than bees, but they are usually closer to object
  • Studied foraging behavior using RFID-tagged bees
• Uncertain still how exactly olfaction works— lock & key mechanism of scent molecules and receptors? Perhaps vibrational resonance is involved in stimulating olfactory neurons? Can study with insects
• Honey → medicinal/healing properties: high sugar content and low pH make it antimicrobial; bees add enzymes such as those breaking sugar into hydrogen peroxide (antiseptic)
  • Manuka honey (from tea tree, eucalyptus) → especially healing proprieties, used to treat sterile wounds and burns
• Greenery and nature scenery → improves patient conditions in hospitals; even flowers in rooms!
  • Concept practiced since ancient times, but not so much in modern hospitals
  • Viewing flowers makes us smile
  • True floral fragrances have general positive effect; research into whether actual molecules may act as anxiolytics (thought to do so in insects to slow them down when pollinating)
• Extinction threatens many flowering plants, often bc decline in pollinators
  • Even if many undiscovered species
  • What can we do? But local and organic flowers, pay fair prices...