Why Do Plants Apply Scents in the Night?

There's a saying that days look beautiful in sunlight and nights in moonlight. As the sun starts sinking down a number of plants start rising up to wish the moon by holding the boquets of bright flowers, mimicking the twinkling stars up above. A wave of fragrance burst out from these smiling flowers to invite their beloved night companions to the alluring buffet.The thirsty and hungry guests start humming  towards them to gulp soft pollen pills and to drink sweet nectar syrup treasured all over their floral sectors. What a beautiful relationship between flowers and pollinators! It's beyond the comprehension of any modern man who's dazzled in the glare of the artificial wares!

Do you know how these night creatures are called? What that fragrance is? Why that's hustle and bustle in quiet dark environs all around? A great secret lies there. Nocturnal plants like cosmos, gardenias, jasmines, lavenders, lilies, roses and violets mate in that quiet gloomy nights only! The mating facilitators are the twilight guests like bees, flies, beetles, moths and bats. A great hidden sexual activity is always going on throughout the cool night to produce grains, fruits and vegetables for the teaming populations of not only animals but also human beings.

The thirst created by dry hot sun during day time elevate the desire in plants to produce volatile substances of low molecularweight. That's what we call as scents, fragrance or perfumes. Flowers emit these safe chemicals during the night. The fragrant chemicals diffuse all around in the cool breeze.  After sensing the sweet fragrance, the visitors approach flowers, pollinate and fertilize them. So a new generation of plants is born in the form of seeds and those later germinate into baby plants to perpetuate the future plants. The essense of these heavenly perfumes can be sensed well by all creatures except the modern preacher. Why is it so means he has numbness in his nostril rooms because of those petroleum and plastic fumes!

Days and nights are the two shifts in the nature for different kinds of entities on the earth. This could be an adaptation evolved by intelligent organisms to reduce pressure and traffic on the planet and also to maintain ecological balance.  Alas, this feature is lacking in the materialistic modern man. Instead he has been creating disturbances and hindrances to the survival of not only his own species but also to all other creatures. Night-loving plants can't flower in presence of night lighting. Even if plants flower artificial lighting on roads and radio signals from broadcasting towers will always be there to distract the pollinators from visiting the flowers. Even if the invitees are ready to visit they may be killed somewhere midway by calamitous chemicals and poisonous pesticides showered by this modern mortal.

The cosmetic deleterious development has hollowed our minds off common sense and instead stuffed with concrete sense. Let us behave like earthly inhabitants rather like hellish aliens. Though we are diurnal we are lavishly lighting the world as if we're nocturnal creatures, but it's ignored in the dazzling glare of development. Night-long lighting is not at all required. Wherever it's required it can be low-level lighting. Our conscience and practice can save not only energy but also biodiversity and humanity. God save this mindless mankind! 

How do plants do sex?

Most of the plants what we see around are called by botanists as angiosperms. That means the plants in which tiny baby plants or seeds are surrounded by soft and tasty fruit pulp and protective fruit coat. Whether these seeds are formed by themselves or any great mechanisms lies behind it, is the inquisitive question. Yes, that's through sexual reproduction.

We all know that production of babies resembling that of their parents is called reproduction. Could we call production of vehicles as reproduction. No, why because the structure of vehicles is different from that of the factory that produces them! Then what's meant by sex? This's another question!  Sex means being distinguished into male and female beings due to distinctive reproductive features. Just like human beings and other animals plants too exist as male plants and female plants,  or as a single plant with both male and female flowers, or as a single flower with male and female organs. Anyhow union of a male cell with a female cell is compulsory to be called as sexual reproduction.  

Animals and human beings can move from one place to the other to do mating with their opposite sex or to fulfil the need for perpetuation of their species. But plants have their own limitations. That means they can't move from one place to the other. But nature has the sense of "live and let live" principle.

To make possible the process of mating between plants or their beautiful flowers mediators like insects, snails, snakes, birds, bats and other animals and even  elephants are always there! These kind companions which have learnt the art of living are called pollinators. Another question is, "Why are these agents called pollinators?" The answer is due to their assistance in pollination. 

Then, what's meant by pollination? Pollination means transfer of pollen from anthers to stigma. It's just like introduction of sperms into the womb of the female in case of animals.  Here anthers are male parts of the plant that produce and release male cells packed inside a tightly packed micro balls called the pollen. At the time of maturiy the pollen from males has to reach the stigma of the females. This process is made possible by wind breeze, cool water or living creatures. Stigma is the reception counter of the female organ where male cells are let to go deep into the ovary to unite with their female counterparts. 

Wow! What the great mechanism in the plant world? So much process takes place without any song, music, dance, indecency and obscenity. No need of any video clip, sex ads or violence. That's why the nature is so beautiful, great, peaceful and ever appealing!