Zucchini Surprise

I learned something this summer that I never knew before. I read it in the newspaper. It was an article about fried zucchini blossoms (yes, as food).  I'm not interested in frying my blossoms, thank you very much. BUT, I was interested to learn that there are different sexes of the blossoms. How did I NOT know that all these years?

I did notice at the first of the season that my plant would bloom, but not produce any fruit; the flower would just fall off and leave a blank stem.  So strange.  Then it did start producing some squash, so I figured they just weren't getting pollinated or something. Maybe the bees were far too busy to pay attention to the zucchini plant when they were  SO BUSY with the raspberry plants.

The article describe how to use "birth control" in your zucchini plants by using only the female blossoms, then you wouldn't get so much veggies.  Or you could fry up both the male and female blossoms.  I was so surprised to learn this amazing fact that I went right out and looked at my blooming plants. Sure enough--two kinds of blossoms!  One stem of the plant  seems to be mostly male, and then the other side is where the female blossoms produce fruit.  Both big blooms had very busy bugs inside of them, pollinating away.

Gail happened to be here that day, so she learned right along with me.

Male blossom.

There are lots of stems that used to have blossoms on them. They just dropped off the plant after they'd done their job.

Female blossom. It's kind of chewed up on the edges by bugs.

Close up of male blossom. Just One center stamen or something. It's taller than shows in the picture--about an inch or more tall, I'd say. Maybe 1 1/2. This flower is a hand-width.

Female blossom, closer.  A cluster of little things in the midded.  Fruit is coming! I wish I had a photo of the blooms when they were being pollinated (that's not too much of an invasion of privacy, is it?) because the blossoms are so big they hold about three bees at a time and they are just scurrying around in circles.