Welcome! or, Get out!

Among people this situation could well lead to war. Among plants? Business as usual! Or rather, life as usual. For business among plants is a mutually beneficial bartering affair where coexistence trumps profit. A very advanced system, in human terms.

Plant transactions take many forms, starting with the important pollination and seed dispersal for food. Growth is key, but share price? Squatter arrival in the middle of another’s spread would upset the meekest of humans, let alone allowing something of another species or, Heaven forbid! another colour in one’s midst! Yet, the Helichrysum marginatum grey-green mat is flourishing here around the bigger-leaved, alien red Crassula setosum in the Drakensberg. At least their flowers will share a little white!

A lesson in coexistence to Homo sapiens, not at all used to this extreme of magnanimity. But is that really true? People sometimes forget, or never knew that everyone of them is host to a hidden internal metropolis of trillions of microorganisms, from bacteria and viruses to fungi and even archaea, collectively forming the human microbiome. These tiniest of tenants live within, from skin and mouth to eye, not to mention the glut in the gut, outnumbering the human’s own body cells. For human cells in the average body are roughly 30 trillion (about 84 percent of them red blood cells), while bacterial cells in the body are around 39 trillion, most of them residing and doing their thing in the gut. And since this is a flowers website, remember that many general practitioners still explain the good gut bacteria to their patients as gut flora. 

It’s not the robots winning in the modern era, it’s always been the bacteria! But don’t seek excuses for your own behaviour on the basis of all this! Life is a so much bigger phenomenon than any mere live organism, no matter how important (Wikipedia; https://askabiologist.asu.edu; https://www.sciencealert.com; https://www.nature.com).