Nature's Love Ballad: Flowers and Pollinators

Description

The act of pollination is the most well-known and celebrated form of mutual symbiosis seen within nature. One cannot help but marvel at watching bees and butterflies flutter from flower to flower in the springtime, seeming to usher in a cacaphone of warm bliss that thaws our hearts from the cold winter.

In order for plants to become fertilized to produce seeds for the next generation of plants, many rely on pollinators such as insects, birds, bats, and other animals to carry out the task for them. Plants grow flowers that bloom and produce pollen, which is what contains their genetic material. Depending on what pollinator the plant evolved with, the flower is a specific color and fragrance to draw in the pollinator like a magnet.

When the pollinator sees a bright flower, it knows that there is food deep inside in the form of sweet, nutritious nectar. Many people speculate that plants “trick” pollinators into fertilizing them by making them reach deep for the nectar, causing their bodies to become coated with pollen, which they then rub against other flowers to complete the sharing of genetic material between individual plants.

I prefer to romanticize the process by seeing the act of pollination as nature’s way of ensuring that cooperation remains intact among the planet’s ecological flow, because the inter-connectedness of life is what holds everything together in perpetual balance.

Either way, in this case the plants benefit by having pollinators fertilize them for the purpose of producing offspring, and pollinators benefit from having a food source.

What is more beautiful than that?

What We Can Learn

Pollination first and foremost teaches us that there exists incredible beauty within nature. It shows us that everything in nature is an inter-connected system through the circulation of energy. We, too, are a part of this inter-connected system.

The act of pollination from a level of higher consciousness would probably look something like humans cooperating with one another at our maximum capacity. Imagine every human being looking out for the wellbeing of one another, with communities taking responsibility for the protection, education, and overall happiness of every single child.

Likewise, imagine every human being getting involved in planting trees to replenish our planet’s lungs through the re-growth of forests.

If one were to find divinity within Mother Nature, they need not look further than the act of pollination.