Wavy flowers

Dear me. Its surprising what happens when the media likes a story. My colleague Dr John Warren and myself authored a paper Do flowers wave to attract pollinators? A case study with Silene maritima published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. It concludes that flowers have to express the right amount of waviness in order to get pollinated by insects.

It has found ballistic interest on the BBC web, on BBC radio, in Canada, America and Ghana. I might be something to do with the vision of spring (its sunny today) and the vision of flowers just sitting there waving at the passing traffic hoping to attract attention. Bit like optimistic politicians having to draw the right amount of attention to themselves in order to get elected, too little and nobody pays attention, too much vigour and nobody can see what you are doing. Such is life!!