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01/28/2007: "An improbable method of reproduction"

Most of us, at one time or another, have been on the receiving end of the infamous 'birds and bees' lecture. Some folks get more detail than others, some get less. However, we humans invariably get a mammal-centric view of reproduction, which is unfortunate because the plant kingdom's methods of reproduction are so much more diverse. Consider the young hazelnut (sometimes called a filbert), shown in the photo above: in January, long before there's so much as a leaf on the plant, it hangs its sex organs optimistically out in the breeze, so to speak, hoping that there will be a non-rainy day in which some appropriately favorable wind will blow pollen from a male catkin to a female one. Generally, filberts are not self-pollinating, so the pollen may have to travel some distance. Filberts are monoecious, meaning a single plant has both male and female parts; the male catkins are relatively long and easy to spot, while the female are small and red. But this system apparently works; the hazelnut next to the greenhouse is several hundred yards, at least, from the next nearest mature hazelnut tree, and it bore nuts this past fall... go figure.

In some later posts I hope to regurgitate some of the interesting reading I've been doing, which has centered on Carol Deppe's very useful book "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties." I find it fascinating to learn that some plants have all-male or all-female or hermaphroditic sex structures, some have both male and female, some it doesn't even matter (they propagate vegetatively). There is practically every single variation on this scheme that you can imagine!

The photo above shows a young hazelnut, growing near the greenhouse and barn. I planted six additional hazelnuts last winter in the auxiliary orchard north of the cowshed. Somehow I find them a reassuring early sign of spring, even if it strikes me as wildly optimistic that pollination occurs reliably in the middle of an Oregon winter. Then again, we're in the midst of a week-long bout of sunshine, so maybe the lowly hazelnut does know what it is doing.