Summer Squash

Recipes anyone?

Comments

[Chris Alongi]

There are lots of different type of flowers. Flowers that have both male and female organs are referred to as "perfect", bisexual, or hermaphrodite flowers. Not all flowers are perfect. This yellow summer squash flower happens to be a male flower but other flowers on the same plant are female. The female squash flower has one large ovary+uterus behind it, which we eat, a large single yellow sticky stigma, which acts as plant cervix+clitoris atop an on-center style, akin to a fallopian tube. This male squash flower has a symmetric arrangement of three to five penile stamens with moist anthers on the end that act as both ponds+testicles as one. The squash plant can be closed pollinated but prefers to open pollinated with other neighboring squash, which can lead to some unusual offspring.

There are many different sexual orientations in the plant world. Some plants only female flowers or only male flowers, such as the pistillate female cannabis plant that is typically cloned to avoid having risk of pollen fertilizing her flowers. Some are bisexual / perfect like lilies. Some are hermaphrodite plants with separate sexes in their imperfect flowers, such as the squash / cucorbita family. Ferns have absolutely no sexual orientation they are all androgynous and reproduce with spores that can only exchange genetic information in a transitional gametophyte stage. A gametophyte is a mini plant thats sole function is to produce a small leaf with sperm and egg right next to one another, which intern fertilize themselves or if a mobile sperm comes along they can reproduce sexually.

[DadH]

squash flowers have never before appeared so glorious--they seem to say Eat Me!

[Kevin Woodson]

Hey Chris, now THAT's an absolutely erotic comment there. And to think, my years and years and years of flower painting has been a thinly-veiled, glorious orgy of every possible permutation of an entire delicatessen of sexual orientations. Which, of course, must result in every imaginable and improbable combination of contrived and accidental family structures in the known universe, now including transgenetic and even nano-manipulated reproduction. It's downright erotic and there will always be a little something extra to the paintings from here on out, thanks to your insight!

I mean, what DO flowers tell the kids? 'Uh, I think your father is that nice bloom over there on the other branch. But then again, being a bisexual flower, I could have mated with the ladies on the other tree, a love so intense it was consummated on the back of a passing squirrel.' And how do parents determine custody? Especially if they can just as easily fertilize themselves?

Thinking back, as a child growing up on the farm in Illinois, back in the early 80's, before there was all this genetic modification nonsense, one of my first summer jobs was working in the corn fields, creating hybrid corn by selectively pulling the male flower, or tassel, out of the plants targeted for fertilization and thus rendering them open to fertilization by the presumptive and nearby 'father' plant, obviously of a different species. Now, I won't say details, but quite a lot of fertilization went on in those Illinois corn fields in the middle of July under the unforgiving midday sun. But I guess corn plants can only conceive with other corn plants, and people are not even part of the action. That's a good thing, but now I need a whole new explanation for the neighbor children...

Okay, okay. I'm back to painting now. But I'm going to be checking the happier flowers to see what they are using for birth control!

[Kevin Woodson]

Oh, yes, Dad! Don't even bother cookin 'em!