| |
Mutualism Lost Its Grip
Roses have bloomed colorful, wearing
A symphony of red, white, and pink.
Gardenia and Jasmine pose in white,
Butterflies are fluttering in delight.
Insects are pollinating flowering trees
Devouring nectar, a fee for the service.
Apple flowers, pretty in pink and white.
Purple peach flowers, an enchanting sight.
The fig trees nearby have flowers too
Greenish blossoms hidden from view
The tiny buds, look like fruits indeed!
In fact, they're inverted flowers within.
Flowers' aroma attracts female wasp
Eager to lay eggs, as romance begins
Inside the Syconium of a male flower.
A mutualism yearning for symbiosis.
Baby wasps will soon mature
The siblings will mate with each other
Wingless males will die, females will fly
In a hurry with the pollen they carry
Searching new male flowers to breed.
Female flowers exude a special scent
Tricking the wasp to shimmy in the stem,
A one way street to death sentence.
Female flowers pollinate, don't reciprocate
No place for the wasp to lay its eggs.
Having lost its wings, it dies for a cause
The flowers in time digest the dead wasp
And grow into a ripened fruit we call fig.
Just this one time, mutualism lost its grip.
Copyright ©
Vijay Pandit
|