I guess the title of the post should really be squash blossoms and sex (biological, not social construction), if I want to get all technical. I'm supposed to be writing a paper on racial and ethnic perspectives on feminism, but instead did a bunch of internet research on squash blossoms.
I ran into a classmate by the community garden after having just flattened a cucumber plant with an overly strong spray from the hose (oops). I showed him my plants and he said that if I ever had the need to give away any of my squash blossoms, then I should feel free. I usually just kind of leave them on the vine since I want the zucchinis, but I had just read some stuff about cucumbers and how the flowers are either male or female and only the female ones actually develop fruit. Lo and behold, zucchinis are the same way, so it's safe to harvest the male flowers without sacrificing any zucchinis, but the male blossoms have pesky anthers that you have to remove.
2 comments:
so what are anthers?
and are the anthers how you distinguish a male plant from a female plant?
I think anthers are like stamen... they hold the pollen. If you click on the link in the post, it shows how the male blossom has a thinner stem, whereas the female blossoms has a developing squash as the stem.
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