Courgette lovin’

Carl Linnaeus, 1707-1778, means a lot to the world of botany and ecology. His life can only be summarised in books, but the outcome I’m interested in covering is his work and research into plant sexuality, namely the discovery of the stamens and pistils.

I highly recommend reading about him on Wikipedia. There you can also read that he in 1738 married a Sara Elisabeth in Falun. (He has also called Falun “Hell’s Suburb”, something highly understandable considering the mining that have left traces in my hometown’s flora still visible today.)

Basically the stamens and pistils are what helps fruit bearing plants reproduce. They are the plants’ sexual organs, if you see things that way (like I do). Some have them both within the same flowers, others in separate ones. Regardless of which the thing about these two organs is that they need to touch, in order for pollen from the stamen to reach the pistil, or the gynoecium which effectively becomes the plants’ ovary. This is why bees are so important, by the way. It’s estimated that a third of the food we eat comes into existence through this process.

Anyhow, even though the farmer keeps some bumblebees for this very purpose in the greenhouse, nature needs a helping hand and I’m always willing to lend mine! “Pollinating the courgettes” have quickly become my favourite task of the day:

This is the stamen…

…this is the pistil…

… and this is how they meet. Not very arousing but definitely exciting.

If you have courgettes and they tend to rot and die before they ripen, you now know why. Go on, give them a helping hand! And as always, very little needs to go to waste:

The petals looks beautiful in a salad or can be used instead of vine leaves in your dolmades.

On a side note Carl Linnaeus, or Carl von Linné as we know him in Sweden, left another significant imprint in my life. My grandmother and my niece bears the name of his favourite flower, the Linnéa Borealis:

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