Summer is here and wildflowers are beginning to bloom around Squamish. Take a moment to inspect a flower close up, and you will be amazed at the intricate architecture you find inside.
The incredible colours and textures of wildflowers delight our eyes, but they also play an essential role in the life of the flowering plant.
Flowers are the reproductive structures of flowering plants. For fertilization to occur, sperm contained within pollen must be transferred from the male structure of the flower (stamen) to the female structure (pistil). This process is called pollination.
As plants are more or less immobile, they rely on outside factors such as wind, hummingbirds, insects and even animals such as bats to help them pollinate.
The relationship between a flowering plant and pollinator is not all one way - flowers produce nectar, which is energy rich. Both nectar and the high-protein pollen serve as rewards which encourage the pollinator to visit multiple flowers. As the animal or insect feeds, it collects pollen which can be transferred to the stigma of the next plant it lands on.
In addition to a food reward, the colour, scent and shape of flowers can serve as attractants. These attractants are specific for the type of pollinator the flower uses - for example, hummingbirds see orange and red well, so flowers primarily pollinated by hummingbirds will often have red or orange petals. Hummingbird flowers are often tubular, a shape which restricts access to the nectar. This ensures that the bird must hover close to the flower to collect the reward, and in doing so, brushing against the stamens and pistil for the most efficient pollen transfer.
On the other hand, bees do not see the colour red but can see yellow, blue and ultraviolet (UV). Bee-pollinated flowers often have petals that function as landing platforms and nectar guides - patterns that guide the bee to the nectar reward inside the flower. In some cases these patterns are in UV colours, invisible to the human eye.
Flowers and their pollinators have co-evolved to the point where each relies on the other - flowers need the pollinators for reproduction, pollinators need the flowers for food.
Recent research into sub-alpine ecosystems of the southern Rocky Mountains has thrown up some troubling data regarding wildflower blooming.The paper, published in the Journal of Ecology, was put together by scientists from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory including Prof. David Inouye, who has been studying wildflower growing patterns for almost four decades.
