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There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success.
— Max Beerbohm (1872– 1956)1
The Quandary Over Plant Sex
Anyone who has ever cultivated a garden or tended an orchard and watched with
eager anticipation as their crops progressed through the stages of plant development is
aware of the organic relationship between flowers and fruits. Think of your favorite fruits—
apples, watermelons, papayas, cherries, peaches, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, walnuts, or
one of the hundreds of others sold in marketplaces throughout the world. Whether des-
tined for the fruit bowl, the salad bowl, or the cereal bowl, all fruits contain seeds and grow
from small, vase- shaped structures called carpels (or pistils) located at the centers of flowers.^1
To the casual observer, the transformation of these tiny, green carpels into their respec-
tive fruits occurs seamlessly, as if fruit production were simply a continuation of vegeta-
tive growth. But it is not quite so simple. A series of marvelous, complex, and more or less
random events must occur before fruits and seeds can be formed. If any of the steps in this
elaborate succession of events fails, barrenness results, and flowers wither and drop uselessly
to the ground. When this happens in an agricultural context, the consequences can be cata-
strophic. It’s an occurrence farmers and growers know only too well, the threat of which can
rob them of sleep at the start of each growing season.
Apart from their agricultural importance, flowers also appeal to our senses. What could
be more fragrant than a rose, more alluring than an orchid, more exquisite than Queen
Anne’s lace, more brilliant than a sunlit field of golden poppies? Because of their attrac-
tiveness, fragrance, and transitory existence, flowers are associated with youthful beauty,
especially female beauty. As Samantha George and others have pointed out, “Flowers are
traditionally emblematic of the female sex in literary texts.”^2 Flowers give rise to fruits and
swell with seed. The analogy to female pregnancy is inescapable, as in the biblical phrase
“fruit of the womb.”^3 Yet, at the same time, fruit formation appears to be quite different.
Unlike female pregnancy, the pistil of a rose blossom may expand into a seed- filled rose hip
apparently without carnality of any sort.