Talking Plants

As the sky is blue, pollen is yellow. Except when they aren't.  Clouds, dust and the setting and rising of the sun turn the sky grey, red, or even yellow. For flowers, it's a rather rarer occurrence for pollen to not be yellow. Sometimes it is red, brown or green, and occasionally even the (usual) colour of the sky, blue. Blue pollen is found in a few unrelated species, such as borage and various species of geranium, willowherb ( Epilobium ) and squill ( Scilla ). The blue-pollened flowers I'm most familiar with are the New Zealand species of Fuchsia . This is a genus we mostly associate with the Americas, where there are 100 or so species, but three species are found only in New Zealand, and all have blue pollen. Six years ago, I posted a story about one of these New Zealand species, the world's tallest fuchsia, tree fuschia or k ōtukutuku ( Fuchsia excorticata ). This is a widespread species on all three main islands. There is also a thick stemmed climber,  Fuchsia ...