May 19 2009
A Kinky Science Fact
I learned something new yesterday. Now I’m a bit ashamed I didn’t “get off my posterior” and fill that gap sooner. What I didn’t know about had to do with the birds and the bees. Well, blossoms and insects, really. Specifically, once pollen grains are transported from one flower to the next, how do they make their way to the plant’s female gamete?
In the article Sex Life Of Plants Reveals Conflicts Between The Sexes I encountered a sentence that changed my life.
Pollen grains need to have a pollen tube that can quickly penetrate the surface of the pistil and grow down to the ovule.
Oh cool!
Okay, that one fact won’t change my life significantly. But it did bring a “so that how it works!” moment and a new piece of information to add to my grey-matter databank. Also, as I think about it now, there are probably scores of other basic science topics that my education is incomplete on.
So to the library I go. Later today. And I’ll come home with a stack of books about science. Which is to say about the world I live in. I can’t wait to get started.
[...] to be on my wavelength, by the way. While reading that, I noticed that the other day he mentioned A Kinky Science Fact. I thought I’d share that with you since it popped up and was also part of my Bio 112 class. [...]