Sundews just want to be loved
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 11:07
in Mathematics & Economics
Sex can be complicated at the best of times, but plants have an extra difficulty. If you're a plant who relies on insects to pollinate your flowers and reproduce, you will want your flowerstalks to be long. That way your flowers are on display to insects above the crowd. But if your stalk is too long, you'll stand out to herbivores, and you flower will end up as someone's lunch. It used to be thought that carnivorous plants like Sundews had the opposite problem.