{"id":7917,"date":"2016-05-16T19:35:33","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T23:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7917"},"modified":"2017-04-20T11:42:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:42:11","slug":"sex-in-the-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7917","title":{"rendered":"Sex in the forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The forest\u00a0fairly screams with sex these days.<\/p>\n

Flowers are sticking their parts out, begging to be fertilized. Hey there, bee, you wanna give it a go?<\/em><\/p>\n

And yes it is sex – it’s a reproductive act and there are male and female parts involved.<\/p>\n

Today it was the skullcap, seducing\u00a0with its purple hood:<\/p>\n

\"skullcap\"<\/p>\n

Whorled milkweed, with its baby-face perkiness, flirting with butterflies:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6015\"<\/p>\n

And a lone, loud fire pink<\/a>, protruding its 10 pollen-covered stamens from those shakin’-it bright petals like cleavage from a disco dress:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5997\"<\/p>\n

Plants have it tough. They have to reproduce, but they’re stuck in one place; they can’t run around the forest floor looking for a mate with a martini in hand.<\/p>\n

So their flowers are designed to entice bees, butterflies and other pollinators to come hither. Some flowers are more successful at this than others; lady slippers <\/a>are entirely dependent on the gullibility of bees to enter their pink chamber\u00a0more than once, even though they offer not the slightest tongue-swipe of nectar. That’s why only about 5 percent of them get pregnant every year.<\/p>\n

It’s not just the flowers that are trying to get busy.<\/p>\n

Cinnamon ferns, which reproduce by spores, grow big brown sticks – those are the fertile parts. The pretty green fronds are sterile supporters.<\/p>\n

\"single<\/p>\n

Sticking up like that, the brown frond can more easily scatter its spore to the wind, finding fertile ground somewhere beyond.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2003, because\u00a0Osmunda cinnamomea<\/em> spores lose their viability within 3 days. The roots are reportedly good for rheumatism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The forest\u00a0fairly screams with sex these days. Flowers are sticking their parts out, begging to be fertilized. Hey there, bee, you wanna give it a go? And yes it is sex – it’s a reproductive act and there are male and female parts involved. Today it was the skullcap, seducing\u00a0with its purple hood: Whorled milkweed, … read more Sex in the forest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[109,804,999,1000,498,906],"class_list":["post-7917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-109","tag-bees","tag-fern","tag-fertility","tag-flower","tag-reproduction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7917"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8203,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions\/8203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}