“Flowers use beauty to link plants and animals into the collaborative unions that build and sustain much of the natural world”
“Flowering plants built rainforests and prairies, and their grains, oils and pastures are the foundations of human agriculture. We live on a floral planet”
“The floral takeover of planet Earth was a revolution enacted not by violent overthrow, but through new forms of co-operation, often mediated by beauty”
“By speaking directly to pollinators’ senses, flowers attract and motivate their animal collaborators. Through this aesthetic connection, flowers gain reliable couriers for pollen, and animals are usually rewarded with nutritious nectar and pollen”
“Every part of the flower stimulates animal senses, eliciting attraction. This is ecological beauty, sensory connections binding flowers and animals into fruitful partnerships”
“Whole dynasties of insects, most notably bees and butterflies, evolved in response to the flowers’ generous invitations to co-operation”
“The result of these new relationships between plants and animals was a surge in the productivity and diversity of the Earth. All this, mediated by beauty”
“Illusion and deception are beauty’s shadows. Because beauty is such a powerfully motivating experience, it opens the door to exploitation. Not all flowers are kind to their pollinators”
“Such deceptions only work because the beauty of most flowers is honest. This opens opportunities for a small number of cheats”
“We humans are not pollinators, but flowers beguile us, too. Part of this devotion is utilitarian – without the flowering plants in agriculture, most humans would starve – and some of it is motivated by beauty alone. When we perfume ourselves, give a bouquet, garland an altar, or plant flowers in gardens and window boxes, we become, like bees, floral collaborators”
“Flowers provide rich sensory reminders of the vitality and interconnectedness of nature. No wonder we use them to mark important connections and transitions in human life: courtship, weddings, burials and religious and secular celebrations”
“To deepen our relationships with floral beauty, we’ve brought flowers into cultivation”
“As with other forms of floral beauty, this cultivation of flowers has a shadow alongside the beauty. Flowers bred to meet human aesthetic desires sometimes lack pollen and nectar, providing little benefit to pollinators”