why upright?

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There are all kinds of flowers in bloom now, many shapes and sizes and colors all designed to be alluring to attract pollinators. But this one caught my eye. I had never seen it before. It didn’t look like the traditional composite meadow flower but more like a ballerina in a tutu. So, I paused to take a photo and asked, “why?” Nature is not only beautiful but logic. 

A traditional composite flower like a sunflower or daisy is made up of two parts: the outer ring of petals, also called ray florets and the center with the female and male parts called disc florets.

The above flower is an upright prairie coneflower. But the petals are smallish and dangle to the side while the disc is upright and hard to miss. 

Why?

This little nature mystery was perhaps solved by Nebraska naturalist Chris Helzer. He did an impromptu study and watched an upright taking photos of the various insects that happened to land on the disc. And as it turned out, probably because of its size and ease of landing, this species of coneflower is visited by a wide array of insects both big-bodied and small: beetles, bees, flies, katydids, crickets as well as butterflies. It has a very complex ecology surrounding it and that leads to its success of producing seeds. The ultimate goal of any flower. 

“Complexity leads to resilience because there are multiple species that can fill similar roles, “ writes Helzer.

And that is the “why” of this story especially important since National Geographic recently reported that in some places, up to 70% of the insects are now gone. 

And for those on the go, a gram in an Instant. 

Click: Stephen Lyn: Instagram 

Author of Natural Histories, Ghost Birds and Ephemeral by Nature all published by the University of Tennessee Press.

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