Albert's Greenhouse

So, I'm watching this episode of The Private Life of Plants, and they're out on some coastal South African meadow watching bumble bees pollinate a particularly interesting flower. It's got yellow colored tubular stamens, and though it looks like there's pollen one them, the pollen is actually secreted way down inside the flower somewhere. The bumble bee knows the secret, though - it just has to buzz at the right frequency when it's on the flower, and pollen will come shooting out of the stamens.

And I'm thinking that this is a neat strategy. The flower conserves pollen for its chosen pollinators. Quite similar to the way many orchids require a specific stimulus to release their pollen sacks. So cool, in fact, that I might just want to get a plant like that for myself.

Well, after some online research, I realize that I have a plant like that myself. And you probably do to. It turns out that tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and even blueberries work this way.

In fact, greenhouse growers of tomatoes used to shake the flowers by hand to encourage good fruit set, until they discovered that bumblebees will work for cheaper than humans...